DiggerBee On Birchwood
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Digger Bees In Twin Oaks Valley
© W.P. Armstrong 29 April 2022
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On 28 April 2022, I discovered the small, circular nest entrances of digger bees on Birchwood Drive in Twin Oaks Valley. At first I thought they were ant nests until I saw a bee hover above the openings as though it was deciding which hole was its nest. Apparently they often nest in burrows close to each other. Then it darted into the opening and disappeared into the tunnel. I have observed these remarkable "digger" bees before in Rattlesnake Canyon, San Diego County. They belong the bee family Anthophoridae and the large genus Anthophora. These are solitary, ground-nesting bees with rapid, darting flight. They can hover in mid air and then dart away in a split second. As with other digger bees, they provision the nest with pollen and nectar for their larvae to eat. In fact, these native bees are important pollinators.
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Entrances to nests of digger bees. In this area there were at least a dozen different nests with more in the process of being dug by busy bees, each about the size of a honey bee.
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Close-up images of Anthophora placed on light box. In order to get these macro images, movement of bee was temporarily slowed by briefly placing it in refrigerator.
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Native species of Anthophora are important pollinators.
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Portrait of native species of Anthophora, an important pollinator bee with bristly pollen-carrying hairs. A downward-pointing proboscis (tongue) is covered with pollen grains. It is inserted into flowers resulting in cross pollination.
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Another Metallic Green Bee At Nearby House
Sweat Bees (Family Halictidae) Also Nest In Ground
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To my surprise, this was not the entrance to an ant nest. It is a ground-nesting metallic sweat bee (family Halictidae). I collected one of these for my entomology class at CSULA over 60 years ago. I have kept it all these years.
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A metallic sweat bee (possibly Augochlorella sp.). This family includes several genera of beautiful metallic bees. They are named sweat bees because they are attracted to the salt in human sweat. Some have a sting rated 1.0 on the Schmidt Sting Pain Index. This is a mild sting compared with a honey bee at 2.0. Specimen in photo from the author's entomology collection in the early 1960s at CSULA.
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Are Bee Wings Transparent Or Translucent
This question was asked by Chris & Denise, 2 impressive neighbors who saw the digger bee burrows and read the original version of this article. Bees, wasps & ants belong to the insect order Hymenoptera (membrane-winged insects). Most on-line references refer to insect wings as transparent, but I think translucent is a better adjective for some insect wings. I think authors often use these terms interchangeably; however, if you can see an object through a membranous wing, like looking through clear glass with no distortion or haze, then the wing is transparent. Of course, this depends on above or substage lighting, and color of background.
Quartz is a hard crystalline mineral composed of silicon dioxide. It is second only to feldspar as the most abundant minerals in the Earth's crust. It is common in igneous, metamorphic and sedimentary rocks throughout mountain and desert regions of the world. The following image shows the translucent quality of a quartz fragment compared with a U.S. Penny.
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