Posts Tagged: Robbin Thorp

Know Your Native Bees: Here's How!

Do you know your native bees? Can you distinguish a sweat bee from a leafcutting bee from a cuckoo bee from a mining bee? No sweat? Or, are you...ahem...sweating the answer?  You can learn more about native bees at a special presentation on...

Drama in the Pollinator Patch

So here's this newly eclosed male monarch trying to sip a little nectar from a Mexican sunflower (Tithonia). A female longhorned bee, probably Melissodes agilis, seeks to claim it. There's no such thing as sharing, especially when nectar is at stake and...

What's Better than Sighting a Bumble Bee?

What's better than sighting a yellow-faced bumble bee, Bombus vosnesenskii? Well, a newly emerged Bombus vosnesenskii queen. On the last day of June, we spotted this fresh queen-looking foraging on our blanket flower (Gaillardia). Her jet-black color,...

That Cuddly Teddy Bear Bee

Oh, that cuddly teddy bear. The male Valley carpenter bee, Xylocopa varipuncta, also known as "the teddy bear bee," comes around occasionally to nectar our broadleaf milkweed, Asclepias speciosa, in our pollinator garden. The milkweed is the...

Bed and Breakfast for a Bumble Bee

We just met a male black-faced bumble bee, Bombus californicus. It was early morning and he was resting on a blanket flower (Gaillardia), a brilliant member of the sunflower family. When you're a bee, a blanket flower offers both bed and...

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