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Pollinator Post 3/16/23 (2)

Time to check on the Silverleaf Lupine, Lupinus albifrons along the Bypass Trail.  The blooming here appears to be a little more advanced than those at Diablo Bend.  It is gratifying to see that most of the older flowers on the lower part of the inflorescence have been well pollinated.  How can I tell?
A heavy bee, either a Bumble Bee or a Digger Bee, has landed on the horizontal surface of the wing petals, lowering and parting them.  This causes the dark-tipped keel to bounce up through the gap between the wing petals.  Simultaneously the reproductive structures are extruded through the keel.  When the bee flies off, some pollen has been scraped off the anthers onto the tip of the keel as the flower parts bounce partially back into position. 
An extra heavy bee, probably a queen, has permanently lowered the wing petals, exposing the entire keel inside.  
The reproductive structures are left exposed on this flower…
…and this flower.  
The most common bees visiting the lupine flowers today are the Black-tailed Bumble Bees, Bombus melanopygus.  There are some noisy Digger Bees as well, and an occasional Yellow-faced Bumble Bee, Bombus vosnesenskii.  
A shiny, black insect on a lupine flower catches my eye.  It is by now a familiar sight around the lupines – the Picture-winged Fly in the genus Curranops, family Ulidiidae.  
A female Curranops is running around on a lupine leaflet, its ovipositor fully extended.  She must have been laying eggs.  Where? On the plant?  
Another view of the same Curranops female running up and down the same leaflet, gently waving her outstretched wings. 
Little is known about the natural history of Curranops.  They seem to hang out on the Silverleaf Lupine a lot.  We have seen a pair mating on an inflorescence.  Is the Silverleaf Lupine their specific host plant?
Here’s a new species of Lady Beetle for the garden this year – the Seven-spotted Lady Beetle, Coccinella septempunctata (family Coccinellidae).  
The most common lady beetle in Europe, the species now enjoys a worldwide distribution. The species has been repeatedly introduced to North America as a biological control agent to reduce aphid numbers.  It has since spread by natural dispersion to many states, outcompeting some native species of lady beetles.  The Seven-spotted Lady Beetle has red elytra punctuated with three black spots each, plus one additional spot being spread over the junction of the two elytra behind the thorax, making a total of seven spots. 
While both adults and larvae mainly eat aphids, they also feed on other soft-bodied insects, and eggs and larvae of bugs, beetles and butterflies. There are one or two generations per year.  Adults overwinter in ground litter in parks, gardens and forest edges and under tree bark and rocks.  The species occupies a broad range of habitats, generally living wherever there are aphids to eat. The distinctive spots and conspicuous colors warn of their toxicity, making them unappealing to predators.  When threatened, the beetles can secrete a foul-tasting toxic fluid from their leg joints. 
It’s amazing what you can see when you sit still among the flowers.  A fast moving orange mite races all over a lupine flower. It is most likely a Phytoseiulus species of predatory mites (family Phytoseiidae). 
Mites are minute arachnids (8-legged arthropods), ranging in size from 0.01 to 0.03 in.  Unlike spiders, the mite has the cephalothorax and the abdomen fused into one single body part, with no obvious segmentation. The predatory mites feed on plant-feeding mites, as well as thrips and other small insects.  They are faster moving and slightly larger than their prey.   Predatory mites are widely used to control pest mites, and are commercially available.
Thanks to the work of the Bumble Bee or Digger Bee, an American Winter Ant, Prenolepis imparis (family formicidae) has free access to the pollen that have been extruded through the keel of this lupine flower.  Yums, free lunch!
Someone has cut through the petals of a lupine flower bud exposing the reproductive parts.  It is a remarkably clean, and precise operation.  A pollen thief?  A nectar robber?  Did an ant do this?
While running around to photograph a foraging bumble bee worker, I came across this huge Bumble Bee hanging listlessly from a lupine flower.  Its weight has totally eviscerated the flower when it landed.  I thought it was a queen Yellow-faced Bumble Bee until I got home and looked at the photo on the big screen.  The bee has a black face, Duh!  A California Bumble Bee?  I wish I had tried to take a picture of the top of its abdomen.  The color pattern would greatly help with identification.  

Curious about the Pollinator Posts? 

Who created the Pollinator Posts?2025-12-09T10:27:17-08:00

The Pollinator Post is a photo journal created by May Chen, a local naturalist.  It started many years ago, as simple e-mails sharing the excitement of discovery with fellow hikers and gardeners.  The burgeoning readership eventually necessitated the creation of the Google Group, the Native Gardeners three years ago.  Now the journal has found a permanent home at our website, with easy access to all.  Let May guide you through the miniature world of the creepy crawlies, regaling you with the drama that is happening right under our noses.  Enjoy!

May likes to describe herself as a career volunteer.  She has been a docent at Martin Griffin Preserve in West Marin for more than 20 years.  Her passion for plants and insects has led her naturally to the study of pollination biology.  She has taught docent-training classes on pollination at the Regional Parks Botanic Garden.  As a volunteer with the Friends of Sausal Creek, May has helped in the native plant nursery and tended the BridgeView Pollinator Garden.  She enjoys exploring the East Bay parks and gardens, and shares her observations on the Pollinator Post.  

Because of her initial focus on pollinators, especially bees, May has titled her missives “Pollinator Post”.  However, over the years of observation, she realized that we should view the botanical world as an interconnected whole that embraces other plant-insect interactions that are often overlooked – e.g. predator/prey, decomposer/recyclers, host/parasites, each contributing to the health and stability of the collective.  Too often we are quick to judge insects as “good” or “bad”, ignoring their true roles in the ecosystem.  We need to understand these relationships if we were to be good stewards of our gardens, our farms and wild lands.

To see more of May’s work, see the following article and videos:

The Buzz in My Garden by May Chen, originally published in the Regional Parks Botanic Garden quarterly newsletter Manzanita in 2018

Life and Death on Milkweed

Life and Death on Silverleaf Lupine

How were the photos taken?2026-01-06T09:08:09-08:00

The photos in the older Pollinator Posts were taken with a series of Canon Power Shot point-and-shoot cameras with built-in macro capabilities.  Once May discovered the amazing convenience of the iPhone camera in 2019, she gave away all her other camera equipment.  Since then she has taken all her photos with her trusty iPhone 11Pro.  The close-ups are taken with a Sandmarc attachable 10X macro lens.  “Anybody with a cell phone can do it!”

 

There are countless other attachable macro lens available on Amazon, some as inexpensive as $30, that also work  well.  In fact, here’s one recommended by a bee enthusiast friend, Emil. The disadvantage of this lens, when compared to the Sandmarc, is that it clips on, and the clip could get in the way. 

In what area, locations, and when were the photos taken?2025-12-08T15:17:07-08:00

The photos in the Posts were taken in the East Bay of the San Francisco Bay Area; they were taken at Crab Cove and Bay Farm Island in Alameda, Skyline Gardens and the Bridgeview Pollinator Garden in Oakland, Mendocino Park in Richmond, numerous sites in the East Bay Regional Park District, such as the Regional Parks Botanic Garden, and Inspiration Point, other open space areas in Alameda and Contra Costa counties. and occasionally at private gardens, among other locations..

The Pollinator Posts began on July 12, 2019. Post creation is paused at the end of each year, during the quiet time for insects, and resumes in the following spring.

How can the Posts help me garden for wildlife?2025-12-08T15:16:39-08:00

Browse the Posts to see what insects you might look for in your own garden on certain plants at a specific time of year. For example, you could search on “August”, and among the results you’ll see that you could be looking for leaf cutter bees on aster and, early in the morning, male longhorn bees sleeping on buckwheat or tarweed. If you have soap plant (aka soaproot) you might see the caterpillar of the western brown elfin butterfly, or dance flies.

Search on ‘pale swallowtail caterpillar” and you’ll see that it can be found on coffee berry, as can miner bees, hover flies, lady beetles, and more. Try it! Search on “clarkia,” “sunflower,” “gum plant,” or “acmon blue butterflies” and see what you discover!

How can I search the posts?2025-12-08T15:16:05-08:00

The search engine looks at every word in a post: you can search on an insect, such as caterpillar, a plant, like lupine, a month, or a location.

Can I use the photographs or text in these Posts?2025-12-08T15:15:11-08:00

The photographs and text in the Pollinator Posts are licensed as

CC BY-NC (Creative Commons: Attribution-NonCommercial). Basically, this means that the content can be used by others as long as they properly attribute it to © May Chen, and use it for non-commercial purposes.

Thank you to…2025-12-09T10:28:01-08:00

May Chen, for allowing her work to be made available to the general public on the Bringing Back the Natives Garden Tour’s website. 

David Faden, for solving the technical aspects of how to get the Posts, which were in an invite-only email Google Group, onto the Tour’s website. This was complicated, as you can see here.

Jeffrey Samorano, owner of Fearless Digital Journey, for integrating the posts into WordPress and making them functional and attractive.

Michael May, Clytia Curley, and Robin Mitchell for their help with earlier versions of this project. 

It was a pleasure working with all of them on this project. 

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