There are a couple of fairly common woodland butterflies that I usually start to see right around this time of year: the comma butterfly and the mourning cloak butterfly. It should be a bit of a toss-up which I see first since they start to appear at roughly the same time. In practice, it seems like I usually spot the mourning cloak first. This year was no exception to that; I spotted my first mourning cloak on the 21st (I didn’t have my camera with me at the time, though), and I haven’t spotted a comma yet.
The two species are relatively closely related and have a similar strategy that allows them to be present super early in the spring; both overwinter as adults and can feed on tree sap so they aren’t dependent on flowers blooming to be active.
This mourning cloak butterfly was basking in a patch of sunshine in the woods which might be part of why I was able to creep up on it. Their distinctive colors and markings make them pretty unmistakable.This comma butterfly is perched on one of its host plants (plants their caterpillars develop on), willow.
It occurred to me that in one of my last posts ‘Life in a Dead Tree’, I described the bees I found nesting in the tree, and included the best photo I’d managed to take of one of them, which wasn’t very good. I knew at the time that it wasn’t particularly good, but decided it was better than nothing. That didn’t stop me from trying to get a better one next time their nesting season came around. It took me over a month of attempting whenever the weather seemed good for bees to be active, but I finally managed to get the photos I was after. And some of my ‘failed’ attempts were actually kind of cool in their own right.
At the time I took this picture, I wasn’t sure whether to be amused or disappointed that only the bee’s antennae were visible… I did not have a proper picture of these bees nesting yet, and the bee seemed to have no intention of coming out the rest of the way. It is kind of cute though, and now I can properly enjoy it knowing I eventually succeeded in photographing these bees.This is the nest of the bee I waited for for quite a while (in a not very comfortable position) to come out of her nest. All she ever did was poke her antennae out a bit. I spotted this nest thanks to all the ‘sawdust’ piled around the entrance from recent excavations. All you can really see of the bee in this photo is a tiny glint of green in the hole.This is not the species of bee I was after, but it was my first decent photo of a bee emerging from a nest in a log. It isn’t quite as sharp as my next set of pictures, but it does show the bee actively excavating her nest (you can see the chewed up wood in her mandibles) which I think is pretty cool.My first clear shot of an augochlora bee exiting her nest!Another shot of the augochlora bee taken a second or so after the first. I spotted this bee as she was entering her nest, and had to wait a while for her to come back out. Fortunately, I was able to get into a better position this time.Another bee scoping out a log. I don’t know if she had a nest here, or if she was looking for a spot to build her nest, but she looked pretty next to the yellow-green moss. Her genus name, augochlora, actually translates to ‘gold-green’.
Earlier this winter I spotted some interesting looking structures on an old dried lobelia plant. They were pretty tiny, so, as I frequently do, I brought out my macro lens to photograph them and get a better look.
The ‘interesting structures’ on the lobelia
They turned out to be the skeleton of the part of the plant that holds the seed capsules. I realized this when I managed to find one that was still holding on to a capsule.
Great lobelia with seed capsule.
In summer, great lobelia has distinctively shaped blueish-purple flowers. In winter it is very much just one more dried plant stem unless you look very closely!
I spent a large portion of the warmest day of the year thus far trying to find a particular bee. The bee I was looking for (colletes, probably colletes inaequalis) was one that I’d seen regularly in the spring and was often one of the first bees I’d find, but last year, I didn’t see any. I wasn’t sure if it was because they weren’t around, or if I just wasn’t looking at the right times. I did eventually spot some, but for some reason, they seem more skittish than I remember them being. Also complicating matters, the willows I was searching for them on have grown a bit too tall for me to see all the catkins well, and I noticed a hover fly with strangely similar coloration to these bees all over the willow catkins, making it hard to tell at a glance if the little flash of silver and black I was seeing should be followed. Makes me wonder if the flies are mimicking the colletes bees, though… they certainly look like they could be, but these bees aren’t exactly intimidating, so why mimic them specifically?
Hover fly on willow catkinHover fly on willow catkinHover fly on willow catkinColletes bee I caught this year
In the end, I found that some of the bees were visiting the flowering winter crops in the hoophouse and I managed to catch a couple on their way out. The bee in the picture pretty much flew into my hand and I took the opportunity to hang on to him just long enough to get my camera ready.
And for one last look-alike, here is a mining bee (an andrena species) on a willow catkin.
For honey bee colonies that have made it through the winter, the month of March can still be a difficult and risky time. Especially towards the beginning of the month, there isn’t much of anything for them to forage on. Despite that hinderance, the bees are busily expanding their brood rearing operation. The colony’s growing new generation requires more resources than what the relatively small (and all fully grown) winter generation needed. If the colony was successful the previous season, this should be no problem; their stores of honey and pollen would be adequate for the job.
Honey bee grooming pollen off of her antennae, to be collected in her pollen baskets.
But in the case of my colonies, which were started late last year, and then faced a weirdly early start to winter, they were a bit short on pollen, which is especially important for their developing brood. The warmth of spring also came fairly early this year, and so there was plenty of time before anything was blooming outside for the bees to be out and about, looking for something to feed their brood.
Honey bee gathering pollen from Tokyo bekana flowers. Tokyo bekana is a very mild green in the mustard family that we grow during the winter.
Meanwhile in the hoophouse many of the winter crops were starting to bolt (produce their flowers), and the warmer temperatures meant that the louvres were open most of the time… So before long, the bees discovered it and were flying in through the louvres to gather pollen from the bolting winter crops. This would have been just fine, if they were able to find their way back out. Unfortunately, although they were very clever about navigating their way in, when they decide it is time to return to the hive, they tend to try to fly towards the sun, rather than retracing their path. I guess maybe they need to orient themselves for a while before they can pick out their route home? However it works, the result was that with just the louvres open, most of them couldn’t find their way out, and with the sides also opened up, some of them still found themselves stuck in the corners. (Bumble bees don’t have this problem… they seem to be extremely good navigators. They’ll fly into a corner occasionally, but usually after trying unsuccessfully to escape for a minute they just go off and try another way.)
Honey bees foraging on flowers from our winter crops
My response to this was to gather flowers from the bolting plants and arrange them in what I hoped would be a tempting display not too far from the hives (but also not too close, because that can lead to robbing, sometimes) and to catch bees that got in the hoophouse and brush them out of the corners.
Honey bees foraging on flowers from our winter crops
The bees seemed to appreciate having a nearby patch of flowers to forage on, but some of them would still start flying into the hoophouse on the warmest days. One day toward the end of March, I noticed very few bees getting into the hoophouse despite it being a warm sunny day, and there were fewer on the patch by the hives. Finally, something else was flowering for them… but what was it? I didn’t see them on the hazelnut catkins that were just starting to open. Hazelnuts are wind pollinated and offer only pollen, which they would have gone for if something wasn’t offering them a better deal. It turned out to be the silver maples back in the woods.
Silver maple flowersSilver maple flower (I don’t have pictures of the bees on the flowers because most of the flowers were way up above what I could reach, and I actually had to trek quite a ways just to find a tree with a low hanging branch with flowers I could photograph. The bees, meanwhile, probably don’t find it worth their while to come down there much when most of the flowers are up high.)
So now, as more things join the silver maples (willows are also starting to open their catkins now), the colonies will start to grow, and turn their attention toward their next season, which is the swarming season.
Silver maple flowerPollen dusted honey bee hanging from a willow catkin
This past Sunday was very warm for this time of year and I decided to check on my bees and see how they were doing. I wanted to see if it looked like they had enough honey left to make it until spring, and make sure that it would be accessible to them. Sometimes, as the cluster of bees makes its way slowly through their winter provisions, they find themselves with empty combs between themselves and the combs filled with honey. They can’t cross the barrier to get to the honey, because the cluster itself moves very slowly (especially when raising brood), and individual bees would quickly become immobilized by the cold.
This is the first time I have done a midwinter hive check, so I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect. The sun was shining, but it was windy, and the wind was chilly. I knew the bees wouldn’t like that, but it was only expected to get more windy as the day went on. (Since this needed to be a quick check since it was only marginal weather for beekeeping, all the photos in this post are courtesy of my mom.)
The first hive I opened was the colony that had had the most honey going into winter. The winter cluster looked (from what I could tell having never looked at a winter cluster in person before), pretty good. It seemed like a decent size; there were still plenty of bees left. They didn’t seem very happy about having the chilly wind suddenly blowing on them, though.
The winter cluster
I could see that they still had honey left, but it looked a little scattered, from what I could tell without really taking things apart. It also wasn’t something I could just rearrange to get the honey next to the bees. I did still have a couple of candy boards left over from last winter, though… I decided to go get those out to give to the bees, just in case.
The candy boards (and smoker). The candy boards are filled with hardened sugar, and have a mesh on the bottom that holds the sugar in place while being large enough for the bees to go through to eat the sugar.
That ended up being easier said than done; one of the candy boards was starting to come apart (I was pretty much improvising when I built them… the other one had turned out all right, though). Once I opened the hive for the second time, the bees really started coming out. Some of them seemed upset, and some of them just seemed confused, and cold. But they were all over the surface I needed to set the candy board on. Setting it down without crushing bees was going to be difficult. After I got it in place (I don’t think I crushed many bees, but it was kind of hard to tell this time) I noticed that there was a bit of a traffic jam at the entrance as all the bees that had flown out when I opened the hive tried to get back inside at once.
A traffic jam at the entrance. The entrance is reduced to a pretty small hole to keep mice out of the hive.
The second hive check went much smoother. At that point I was assuming I would have to put a candy board on for them, but they actually seemed a bit better situated than the others. I already had the candy board out and ready to go, though, so I put it on anyway.
Getting the candy board situated on the hive.
Now it has returned to cold and snowy, and the bees are back out of sight in their hives.
My honey bees flying in late November after an early cold spell.
When it gets too cold for the honey bees to leave their hives it can be much harder to tell how the colony is doing. The hives look pretty lifeless on a cold winter day. There may be some dead bees scattered at the entrance. This is actually a good sign, especially if they are recently dead and as long as there aren’t too many of them. It means there are still live bees inside, and they’re cleaning out the dead. If there’s a warm day and the bees can leave the hive, they’ll clean off the entrance board of their hive and fly the dead bees away from it.
A dead bee dropped off into the snow by another member of her colony.
Another sign to look for when there’s snow on the ground is little flecks of yellow in the snow: bee poop. Bees do not poop inside their hive unless they are sick or it stays very cold for a really long time and they just can’t get out.
Bee poop on the snow
The snow also seems to melt a little faster right on the entrance board when the bees are doing well. Other than that, you can’t tell much unless you get a really warm day and are able to take a peek inside, or at least see bees flying around the entrance. But for most of the winter, the bees will be hidden inside their hive, clustered together around the queen, vibrating their flight muscles to generate heat, and eating the honey they stored away during the summer. And then, at some point, usually around mid February here (if not even earlier), the queen will start laying eggs and the bees will have to raise the temperature inside the cluster (to above 90˚F) because the larvae need it extra warm to survive.
The time of year when the asters and goldenrod are blooming (late summer to early fall) is the time of year when most social insects (insects that live in colonies) like honey bees are at their highest population for the year. The asters are one of the last major nectar flowers for the honey bees, and the asters are covered in them. At first glance it may seem to be all honey bees and other social insects (like hornets and bumble bees), but there’s actually quite a wide variety of pollinators drawn to them.
Melissodes (longhorn) bee with pollen on asterHoney bee in flight, new england asterThis is most likely an andrena bee, but the andrena clan is one I’ve not gotten around to thoroughly figuring out yet, so I’m not quite sure.Honey bee in flight, new england asterPainted lady butterfly on new england aster. I often don’t have much luck photographing butterflies when I am specifically trying to, but while just photographing whatever I could find on the asters, this butterfly landed directly in front of me.Honey bee in flight, asterBumble bee on new england asterHoney bee on new england asterCucumber beetle on heart leaved aster. This aster is less common in my yard, and I’ve been trying to encourage it. These flowers are on some new plants found in the lawn this spring and preserved from mowing.Honey bee on new england asterHover fly (sryphid fly) on an asterHoney bee in flight, new england aster
Social wasps like paper wasps apply the large workforce of an insect colony to a different task than that of the honey bees (although wasps are still pollinators): pest control. Adult wasps feed on nectar while their larvae eat other insects. The larvae aren’t able to catch insects to eat on their own, so they rely on the adults in the colony to hunt for them. Paper wasps seem to be pretty non-aggressive from what I’ve experienced, so these are the ones I hope will establish nests around my garden.
Paper wasp on goldenrod looking a little startled to see mePaper wasp grooming on goldenrodPaper wasp grooming on goldenrod
Bald-Faced Hornets
Like paper wasps, bald-faced hornets hunt insects for their larvae, but they also have a reputation for being ferocious, and having very painful stings. I suspect though, that the temperament of individual colonies varies. For one season there was a colony of bald-faced hornets on the from of my house. No one got stung in the time it was there, even though I got pretty close to it a few times. Either way, the foragers (not by the nest) are fairly calm, most of the time. I’ve always thought they were really cool looking, but this is the first year I’ve been able to get pictures of them I’m satisfied with.
Bald-faced hornet on goldenrodBald-faced hornet on goldenrod
At this time of year, honey bees can be reluctant to build comb. Comb takes a lot of resources to build, and empty comb is not of value to a colony heading into winter. (It is actually a liability.) So bees don’t want to build new comb if they might not be able to fill it with honey before winter, and usually this time of year they are focusing on filling the comb they have with nectar. Wax that the bees do produce is often used to cap cells of ripe honey or even elongate cells intended for honey so that they can pack the space they’re already using with even more.
Honey bee making wax. Honey bees secrete wax from glands in their abdomens after eating large amounts of nectar or honey.
At the moment, the little colonies I started this summer are still quite… little. They don’t really have enough comb to fit the amount of honey they require over the winter. I actually have a box of comb that I can give each of them as soon as they each finish filling the box they are in now. (The reason they have to finish filling the box they’re in is due to differences in hive part compatibility.) In the meantime, I have been feeding them ‘bee tea’, which is a sugar syrup made with herbal tea to help them digest the sugar. It is earlier in the year than I would normally feed them, since I only feed sugar if they are likely to starve if I don’t. The goldenrod and asters are still on their way; in the past, I’ve fed them after most of the nectar sources are done for the year and they haven’t collected enough. This year, I’m feeding them to produce the comb to be able to store enough.
My view while harvesting mint for the bee tea. There were lots of honey bees foraging on this little patch of mint. The bee in the foreground is an older forager, as her slightly frayed wings and slight bald patch on her back indicate.Herbs for the bee tea: yarrow, sage, mint, lemon balm, chamomile, stinging nettle. I also had hyssop, but I realized that it’s buried under the sage in the photo. The chamomile and stinging nettle are the dried herbs on the edge of the photo.
The recipe for the bee tea comes from the website of Spikenard Farm Honeybee Sanctuary.
