This is the second in a series of four posts that are being archived from another blog:
(Originally posted in January 2011) All is currently very quiet in the garden here in East Lansing, MI. Up until just last week the garden was covered by a blanket of snow, which during a brief warm spell melted away to reveal the dormant remains of the garden. Over the holidays someone asked me, "Where do all the wild bees go during the winter?" And by wild, they meant bees other than honey bees. "Well," I said, "that depends on the species."
Most wild bees complete their adult lives at the end of the growing season and it is their offspring, the next generation, who await the next season, lying in their nests, dormant, much like plant seeds awaiting the right environmental cues to emerge the following year. These are the solitary or semi-solitary bees. Solitary bees that typically emerge in early spring will be fully formed adults by the time winter is upon them the previous year. Summer-emerging solitary bees will overwinter in a pupal stage and are largely immobile. Bumble bees are not solitary, but form colonies, and therefore follow a different pattern. Bumble bee queens are produced and emerge at the end of the growing season, mate, fatten themselves up - just as bears do before hibernation - by visiting late summer and fall-blooming flowers, and then they find a sheltered place to overwinter while all the rest of their colony dies at the end of the season.
While we wait for winter to end and spring to begin, here are some photos I took back in August and September to get us excited about this coming season...
August 2010 in the garden.
September 2010 in the garden.
A small halictid (a.k.a. sweat bee) on a flower in September 2010.
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