Bees & Wasps

I found this male Northern Paper Wasp on some Goldenrod blossoms growing in my garden. It was content to stare at me curiously as I stared back taking pictures! :) Thanks to Leapfrog (Art) for helping me figure out what kind of wasp this is! :)

This picture shows a bit of the chaos which happened every single morning during the entire month of July. The garden hummed with bees, they were everywhere! I never saw so many at once! They are still visiting every day, but there aren't as many flowers now that the poppies have peaked. What a show it's been! There are four others doing this project with me, and if you'd like to jump in, we'd love to have you! You can catch up when you can! :) 1-10 Project Buddies Chrissy Valfal (Valerie) Jenny McIntyre Rachel Explored on August 12, 2014. Highest placement, #3.

"Air Control to Bumble Bee, you are cleared to land. We repeat, all other insects have departed, you may land at any time!" :D In May of 2013, Steve and I got to visit a friend's garden to take pictures and I spent a few hours totally immersed in complete bliss. Along with a seemingly endless variety of flowers, there were ferns and hostas, and of course, plenty of bees and other insects who were making rounds. I was delighted when I managed to get this cool capture to share with you today!

One of the coolest things about having a garden are all of the insects that come to visit. Of course there were plenty of pests, but lots of beneficial insects as well. Wasps don't spread much pollen, but they do a little bit, and they certainly are fun to observe and photograph! This one spent a lot of time slowly crawling around this fallen morning glory blossom before finally flying away.

It's fun to play with extremely shallow depth of field when you have a macro lens. Here we have a tiny sweat bee on a thistle blossom, and that's the only thing in focus! I found this image back in July, 2013.

Visiting a garden for photography means more than taking pictures of flowers. There are plants, leaves, and interesting landscaping elements too. But the biggest reward might be capturing an insect in flight! I was taking a picture of the Coral Bell flowers when a bumble bee zoomed in for some nectar. I managed to get this shot, and even though the focus isn't razor-sharp, I felt it was such a great angle that I thought it was worth processing and sharing with all of you! :)

About a year ago, Steve and I went on a photo outing that didn't turn out as planned. Our local photo group suggested a high-elevation spot that turned out to be too early in the year and was freezing cold and windy. Disappointed, we returned to our area and found a lovely spot on the Rogue River to explore and take pictures. I found a honey bee who stayed still long enough for a nice shot!

Here is another picture that I took when I visited my friend's garden down in Ashland, Oregon. Insects were plentiful and I remember this bee taking lots of time as it hovered around and then landed on each of these blossoms. (Do you happen to know what these flowers are called? Some sort of Penstemen maybe?)

Here's another image I found in my Ashland Garden Tour folder! I was trying to get the entire bee in focus, but what I got instead was a happy accident!

(+1 inset, showing False Sunflowers grown from seed that Pam gave me!) :) It was a lovely, foggy morning for my walk today and I was warm and fluffy in my soft sweater, gloves and hat. As I walked up and down, I kept looking over at my abandoned garden and thinking about last night. Exactly how many pictures do YOU have stored in your photo folder? Just how BIG is your parent folder? Of course, this size is going to depend on how long ago you began taking pictures and how active you are as a photographer. My oldest folders date back to about 1999 when I wasn't actually a photographer. I didn't really begin generating a lot of pictures until about 2011. Ever since then, there has been a never-ending influx of pictures that's become totally incredulous in size! In fact, my photo directory is so big that checking my computer for the size took nearly 30 seconds to calculate! Ah yes…my photo folder is now a staggering 1.45 TERABYTES. There are 1,928 folders containing 110,623 files. Yes. That's over 100 THOUSAND pictures in my photo folder. Heh. What can I say? I like to take pictures! :D Granted, many of those pictures are aperture sets--the same subject photographed at different apertures, so the actual subjects photographed would probably lower that number closer to 25,000. Heh. *blush* Needless to say, there are gigs upon gigs of pictures I haven't processed. Pictures I only glanced at or not at all. So many pictures that really do deserve to see the light of day. What a tragic reality: the fact is, most will never be processed because I am always taking more pictures! I know I'm not alone though *stares at all of you with a knowing expression*…we all have a glut of unprocessed pictures on our hard drives! So anyway, last night I played a photo game…click on a random folder and see what's inside. I opened up "All the Beautiful Flowers" from July 2014…inside I found 148 pictures from the year I had a garden. I'd only processed six pictures. I could hardly believe my eyes. So many blossoms, bees, critters, bokeh-filled scenes…*sigh*…but what are you going to do? There isn't any way to process them all. But, I could polish one up right now, and that's just what I did! Today's picture is a sunflower with a busy bee! I had many sunflowers that bloomed for me and they were often covered with visitors. I hope you like this bright and cheery picture on this cold December day! Pam, I was thinking of you as I looked through this folder of images. I didn't see any False Sunnies that grew from the seeds you gave me but I certainly have a zillion pictures elsewhere...I'll have to find some to process just for you! It amazes me that they continue to reseed themselves and flower every single year without a bit of help from me. I love them so much because they remind of the bright, sunny, wonderful person you are! (See the inset to enjoy the beauty of these flowers!) Explored on 12/29/18, highest placement, #2.

(+1 inset & four notes to read) (Viewing large is recommended for dreamier details! :) Stepping outside for my walk today, I smiled as I was greeted by the joyful chorus of frogs down at the pond. The temperature's creeped up to a seasonally warm 40°F this morning, but it's not going to last. The forecast promises a dip into the 20's in the next few days so I expect the frogs will need to retreat to their holes until it warms up again. I know that you US Mid- and East-Coasters are laughing at those numbers given the unbelievable cold you've had to endure lately. I hope you're all faring alright. At times like that I worry about power outages and keeping warm. We've had the terrible combination of extreme cold and power outages with only space heaters to keep us warm until the power returned many hours later. It's no fun and it can be scary too. I do hope that you have taken advantage of the rare conditions…my eyes gleam thinking about the macro candy land that extreme cold brings with it, though one must be very economical with the pictures you take and stay out for only a few minutes. I do look forward to seeing some of the unique images that come from the polar vortex. Yesterday I went out for some frosty pictures and as I left the house with my camera, I noticed what appeared to be a green bottle fly huddled on the porch wall. Something about it didn't quite look right but I didn't have time to take a closer peek. I was on a mission to get pictures of the "frost bush" next to the sporophytes down at the gate and my 15-Minute Cold Timer began ticking the second I left the house. I have learned to respect that timer…if I don't my extremities get excruciatingly, painfully cold. A fly was not worth my attention. When I returned to the house I saw the fly again and couldn't resist bending down to stare at it. Instantly I saw what seemed off to me. It wasn't a fly at all--it was a sweat bee*! And the largest I'd ever seen, in fact. These bees tend to be quite small, but this one was the same size as a green bottle fly. (Sweat Bees range in size between 0.12 to 0.40 in / 3 to 10 mm, while Bottle Flies range between 0.28 to 0.63 in / 7 to 16 mm) *NOTE: This is actually a MASON BEE and was identified on the Bug Guide Such a gorgeous and special find was irresistible and I took a few pictures before diving into the warmth of the house, fingers and toes burning from the cold. I didn't expect to get anything good from my quick snaps but as you can see, I managed to get a winner! You'll notice that I dressed up the white wall setting with some filters and the outcome worked out very nicely I think. :) I'm also including a panorama of a lovely afternoon a couple of days ago. We really do get some incredible views! Pam, are you guys in the polar vortex region? If so, I hope that you don't get any power outages and have backup heating just in case! Stay warm! *BIG HUGGGGGS from southern Oregon* :)

Hi everyone! I hope everyone is having a wonderful rest of your weekend! I haven't been able to get to my trip notes yet, so I'm posting another picture from our property. :) Fall is Here! As October marches towards November, the leaves are turning every shade of the rainbow and falling from the trees in ever-greater numbers. Steve and I have been oohing and ahhing over the amazing show whenever we're out and are hoping for a fall photography adventure in if we can fit it in between his projects. Behold the Colorful, Odd Cynipid Wasp Gall One might notice that a few leaves--especially from Oaks--have something strange attached to them. These 1/4"-1"globes are perfectly round in shape, hollow and semi-translucent when held up to the sun . Upon closer examination, there will be a small hole somewhere around the lightly fuzzy ball. What a curious thing! Whatever could it be? This is a wasp gall! There are several species of wasps which lay their eggs in specific trees or other plants. When the larvae hatch and begin eating the plant's leaves, stems or branches, they also exude specialized growth hormones. These hormones cause rapid growth in the shape of a ball or lump of some sort depending on the species of gall wasp. The larvae sit inside this gall, which grows around them and provides protection and nutrients while they mature over the next few months. Eventually they will nibble their way out of the gall as fully-grown adults and fly away! Although they are technically parasites, they rarely do any harm to the host plant and leave only the empty galls as their calling cards. Our property is the home to many types of wasp galls and I think this type- Cynips mirabilis ---is my favorite, though the other species are very interesting and photogenic too! If you would like to know more about some of the different types of wasp galls, here's an informative web page for you: Wasp Galls For more pictures that include images of the various wasps and a lot more information, take a peek at this: In-Depth Article About Gall Wasps of Southern Oregon Explored on 10/26/20; highest placement #1.