Posts Tagged: Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation
It's sad to see and say, but like honey bees, the bumble bee population is declining, and that decline is alarming. Public awareness can help turn this around.
That's why we're glad to see that the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, based in Portland, Ore., has just published a free downloadable booklet titled Conserving Bumble Bees: Guidelines for Creating and Managing Habitat for America’s Declining Pollinators.
The booklet outlines "the important role bumble bees play in both agricultural and wild plant pollination, details the threats they face, and provides information on how land managers can create, restore, and enhance high quality habitat," the authors said. "Importantly, these guidelines describe how land managers can adapt current practices to be more in sync with the needs and lifec ycle of bumble bees."
The booklet also includes bumble bee identification guides to both common and imperiled species in each region and lists important bumble bee plants.
One of the many plants they go for is lavender. In our yard we see as many as 10 yellow-faced bumble bees (Bombus vosnesenskii) foraging at one time. The bumble bees share the lavender with honey bees, syrphid flies, drone flies, blue and green bottle flies, carpenter bees, ladybugs, spotted cucumber beetles, butterflies, katydids, grasshoppers and a few predators, including crab spiders and jumping spiders.
Yellow-faced bumble bee nectaring lavender. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
This is no ordinary calendar.
We just previewed the second annual North American Native Bee calendar and it's just absolutely spectacular.
Created by UC Berkeley-alumnus Celeste Ets-Hokin, a native bee advocate from the San Francisco Bay Area, the calendar is a fundraising project for the Great Sunflower Project and the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation.
The macro images, primarily the work of UC Berkeley-trained entomologist/insect photographer Rollin Coville, are stunning. Coville, who received his doctorate in entomology from UC Berkeley in 1978, has been photographing insects and spiders for more than 25 years.
The calendar is unique in that each month not only features a "pin-up" photo of a bee but also includes notes on preferred plants, nesting needs, and guidance on how to identify the genus. It's like zeroing in on the lifestyles of the not-so-rich and not-so-famous, the ones that share your garden with honey bees. You can preview a sample of the front cover, one month, and back cover of the calendar.
The calendar idea originated with Gretchen LeBuhn, an environmental science professor at San Francisco State University. She's the one who launched the Great Sunflower Project. What's the Great Sunflower Project about? Members plant sunflowers in their garden, monitor bee visits and report back to LeBuhn. "The Great Sunflower Project currrently boasts an online membership of about 80,000 citizen scientists from across the United States and Canada," Ets-Hokin said.
Back to the calendars. This year the theme is "Bees and Food."
A good theme, a good cause, and a good place to learn about the many species of bees, including leafcutter bees, sweat bees and bumble bees, and how to attract them.
The 2010 calendar was so popular that it sold out. The 2011 calendar promises to be even more popular. In fact, the project coordinators are now taking orders. Orders received by Oct. 15 will be shipped the third week of October, Ets-Hokin said. Orders received by Nov. 30 will be shipped the first week of December.
I have it on my calendar. Only problem is, I don't want to part with my 2010 North American Bee Calendar.
North American Bee Calendar