Muck About

Native Bees and the Color Blue

Here is an interesting find in Oregon . OSU entomologist, Sujaya Rao, quite by accident found that our native bees are attracted to blue. The day after jars were set out with different colored lids—red, yellow, blue and green—to trap Asian lady beetles, she found the blue lidded jars were full of bumblebees. The area was devoid of flowers.

After contacting Bill Stephen, a world expert on native and solitary bees, Rao and Stephen experimented with different colored lids. They found that no matter what part of the state they were in, our native bees consistently went for the blue. Now there are new experiments using blue flags in crop fields to see if the blue will bring in more native pollinators. This is important work, considering the recent problems with declining numbers of honeybees.

Read more in this interesting article, The Other Bees, by Carol Savonen.

Faces in the Garden

 

Insects are an integral part of the garden, the good, the bad and the bugly. I learned many years ago, that the best way to keep pests from becoming a major problem in my garden is to strike a balance by including them all. It’s a fascinating miniature world.

Pollinators come in many forms. Many I believe are beautiful when you look at their markings; some are goofy looking in a cartoon character sort-of-way.  Here are a couple I captured digitally.

Two of my favorite images are of this green lacewing, a predator of insects with a voracious appetite. It was found crawling all over a lilium flower. One of the most beautiful insects this side of butterflies, in my opinion and another good reason not to use pesticides. Encourage these beauties to take up residence in your garden.

 

Another predator we all know and love is the ladybug with an appetite for aphids. This angle makes the beetle look like it’s wearing a Darth Vader like helmet and a super hero  red cape.  They are super heroes in the garden.