Three or four times a year, the mock orange in the yard comes into bloom with a prolific show of small, white flowers and wonderful fragrance. During these times it’s a bee magnet and the whole tree buzzes from morning to night.
Posted in response to this week’s WordPress Photo Challenge ‘Prolific.’
Everyone knows bees are busy and industrious, but sometimes they go the extra mile. It makes me smile seeing the positions they get into, burrowing deep into the flower in the quest for nectar.
Posted in response to this week’s WordPress Photo Challenge ‘Smiles.’
Recently, when I moved my truck to mow the lawn, I noticed this scene at a neighbor’s house. I was impressed by the number of bees and the huge, hanging combs filled with sweet honey. When I got out of the truck, I thought I’d get a few photos.
The bee wrangler called out to me that there were a lot of angry bees about. I said I wasn’t going to come closer and asked if it was OK to take photos. He said that was fine, but the bees might come and find me where I was. Since I was a good 70 or 80 feet away, I wasn’t too worried. I snapped a few photos, then heard a buzzing noise, and felt something on my arm. Sure enough it was a bee.
I imagined this bee sending back a message along the lines of, ‘Hey, here’s another one of those creatures, but this one doesn’t have protective clothing. Let’s get him.’ I pictured the rest of the colony heading my way in a matter of moments, so I blew the bee off my arm and hotfooted it back home. Before I went inside I made sure I hadn’t accidentally ended up with the queen bee lodged somewhere in my clothing. No need to have my day turn into a starring role in a horror movie.
After the lawn was mowed, the bee wranglers were still on the scene so I left the truck where it was. A couple of hours later I thought it would be safe to retrieve it. As I reached the house, the bee wranglers were just leaving. We chatted a bit about what they’d been doing. They’d cleaned out the bees’ home in the wall and put a new hive next to it. Presumably they’d found the queen and installed her in her new digs. The idea is to have the bees relocate to the new hive and, when they’re settled in, move it to a new location, probably on one of the farms around here.
They warned me, however, that there were still some disgruntled bees flying around. As if on cue, I heard buzzing. Something landed on my head and started burrowing into my hair. The bee wrangler had just handed my his card and I used that to try and extract the bee. The buzzing intensified, but I couldn’t dislodge it. Finally, it popped loose and I took off for my truck. I jumped inside, making sure the door shut properly and the windows were closed, and drove home.
I avoided walking past that house for a while until, two days later, the hive was gone and it was safe to venture out again.
For more information about Ho’ola Beekeepers, go to savehealthrive.com.
There’s a large mock orange in the corner of the yard that blooms three or four times a year. Sometimes just a section produces flowers. Other times, the whole plant turns creamy white. I do notice the blossoms, but what usually alerts me to a new bloom is the scent. A breath of air in the right direction and the house fills with the aroma of mock orange.
The most recent bloom encompassed the whole plant and also highlighted another of the plant’s attention-getters. It hums. It’s not unusual to wake up and, once the din of roosters and cardinals and francolins have been weeded out, a steady background hum takes over. This is the bees working over the mock orange flowers.
The blooms last only a few days. When the wind blows, which it does often here, the white petals fall to the ground like snow. But while this latest bloom occurred during a calm spell, still the snow fell. When the flowers first began to fade, the bees continued to pile in and their busy harvesting knocked the petals off.
Now the plant is a quiet, glossy green again. The blooms are gone, the bees are gone, the scent is gone, this temporary frenzy over in a week. Until the next time.
Another post on the theme of ‘Glow,’ this week’s WordPress photo challenge.
I’ve posted photos of rose jatropha before (here). In fact, those photos were of this same plant, but probably not the same bee. They were taken later in the day on a previous hike. These photos were taken in the early morning when the light was better and the flowers were just starting to open.
The flowers really glowed and the bees, well they had to work a little harder, burrowing down into the bloom, but obviously with great success.
Ulei (Osteomeles anthylidifolia) has lovely, fragrant flowers. It’s indigenous to Hawaii and is a member of the rose family. Speaking of which, correct pronunciation is important (oolayee). Otherwise, it will likely sound like the aforementioned part of the male anatomy!
This cheerful, but somewhat weedy plant grows along roadsides. It’s particularly striking on Saddle Road where it adds color to the otherwise lava-rich landscape. Also, I like the name. It sounds like the not-too-bright son of a moneyed family on the east coast.
I saw this creature on a wall being eyed by a gold dust day gecko as a possible meal. Eventually the gecko thought better of it, which is probably just as well. This is a sphecid wasp and they can pack a sting, though they aren’t aggressive.
From searches on whatsthatbug.com and bugguide.net, it appears that this sphecid is in the genus Prionyx, probably P. fervens.
