Bees at the Station

We took a train ride recently, departing from the Santa Ana station. To reach the northbound track you climb three flights of stairs to a bridge over the tracks. At the top of the southbound stairwell, we found a collection of dead honeybees in the eddy where the updraft from the stairwell would meet the crosswind from the trains passing by. We crossed the bridge and wondered: Were the bees from the same hive? Where was their hive? Is their hive on the verge of collapse or is it doing OK? We boarded the train and went on our way. The moon rose on the right while the sun set on the left, we met some people with an interest in entomology and literature, ate fish and made it home safely.

Sorry I did not take a photo; no camera in hand, but I'm sure most everyone knows what a dead bee far from its hive looks like by now.

Winter Solstice Bug Count #3

It was a pretty nice day here in southern California for the winter solstice: clear, slightly breezy, about 65 degrees. These are the bugs I saw in my approximately one hour survey around the yard:

ARACHNIDS
Pholcus phalangioides, Daddy longlegs spiders (2) including one very pristine specimen on the kitchen counter.
(1) predatory mite, of a species yet unidentified since last year's survey, crawled quickly across my notebook.
INSECTS
Scaphytopius frontalis, blackish leaf hoppers (4)
Homalocisca vitripennis, newer Latin name for glassywinged sharpshooter (1) nymph
(3) fun little green and orangish leaf hoppers of the genus Graphocephala.
Black aphids on salvia (numerous colonies) and also on abutilon (2 colonies)
Aphis nerii, oleander aphids, in declining multitudes
(1) adult assassin bug of the genus Zelus
(2) adult seed bugs Niesthrea louisianica and (2) egg masses of same
Harlequin bugs, Murgantia histrionica, about (35)
Eggs and (1) adult green lacewing, Chrysopa oculata
(1) lonesome picture wing fly, Trupanea nigricornis
A handful of little house flies, Fannia canicularis, flying around in the shade outside
A handful of flesh flies, Sarcophaga sp, basking in the sun on the fence
A handful of green bottle flies, Lucilia sericata, skulking around the dog's yard looking for their old Latin name
(1) measly drosophila fruit fly
(2) unidentified syrphid flies, one each of two species
A swarm of small flies or gnats circling the neighbor's phoenix palm, probably hundreds of 'em
Polistes exclamans, common paper wasp, (5)
Honey bees, Apis mellifera, (5 or so)
I saw many (100 +) aphids parasitized by braconid wasps, and actually saw (3) adults
Asian ladybird, Harmonia axyridis, were present in 3 forms: (4) larvae (1) pupa (1) adult
(1) katydid 3rd instar nymph, scudderia furcata
(1) male greybird grasshopper just before adulthood, Schistocerca nitens
Geometrid caterpillars, Eupitheca sp, probably Pugs, (3) found on three different plants
Helicoverpa sp caterpillar (2) on geraniums. Are they geranium budworm or not?
Mystery orange and black moths on lambs quarters (2) could be genus spragueia
(9) Danaus plexippus larvae getting restless
and
(1) adult monarch butterfly flew overhead as I was wrapping up my count.

Milkweed Community #5: Sharpshooter

A few glassywinged sharpshooters (Homalodisca vitripennis) have staked out stems on the Asclepias which raised my left eyebrow. As you know these leaf hoppers are xylem feeders known for a few unpleasant qualities, one of those being the droplets of minimally digested sap they emit as they feed. The mouth part inserted into the xylem connects the insect's digestive system with the vascular system of the plant, and so sap flows through the insect in much the same way it flows through the plant. The insect cannot process the sap that quickly and so eliminates droplets as the pressure builds. So, I was thinking (or rather not thinking) how does that thick milky sap of the milkweed become a thin clear liquid capable of being squirted as it passes through the sharpshooter? Um, oops! The milky substance is latex and is carried through the milkweed plant in a different set of vessels, the lactifers. The sap of milkweed is not milky. A common misconception, I fear but easily dispelled if we just give it some thought.

Here is a nice shed exoskeleton to go with that thought.

It's not so easy being yellow and black

So, I'm obsessing about the monarch caterpillars maybe being picked off by wasps just as they are approaching pupa-hood. After the mysterious disappearance of the big one I check daily or even a couple times daily to see how they are doing. They move around quite a lot, sometimes from plant to plant. There is now a general ban on humans walking across the parkway to or from the cars to prevent us from inadvertently stepping upon one. I wonder if I should do something. You know, to help them. It rained last week, and the next morning I found one of the bigger ones off the milkweed. Should I help it back onto the food plant, or is the caterpillar wandering in search of a place to pupate? Two biggies were finishing off the last leaves and pods on a scrawny plant. Should I move them to a fresh new plant or leave nature to its course? I decided to move them by cutting off their stem perches and propping them next to another milkweed plant. But by the time I acted one of them was gone. The one relocated caterpillar immediately moved onto the new plant and started eating. The other one was: Preyed upon? Fallen off its plant? Looking for another milkweed? Pupating? That night it rained again. It must really be cold out there, especially without much food in the belly. Yesterday I found that missing caterpillar in a smallish feverfew plant looking scrunchy. Is it hungry, dying of the cold or getting ready to pupate? In moving a caterpillar you must make sure it hasn't attached it's rear prolegs to the substrate in preparation for molting. This one hadn't, and I got it to crawl onto a long piece of bark which I then propped up in a nice lush milkweed plant. Later in the day it had crawled up into the plant and was feeding voraciously. Am I messing with nature by my small interventions against the hunger of monarch caterpillars? I feel responsible for having invited them to grow in my dangerous yard.

Malvaceae Miner

Here is another spectacular twisting leaf mine in a leaf of Abutilon palmeri. This looks like the work of Liriomyza trifolii, the American serpentine leafminer as postulated in this post showing a similar mine on A. megapotamicum. Same plant genus, similar mine pattern however I haven't confirmed whether L. trifolii, a fly, uses abutilon as food. There is evidence it infests other species of Malvaceae.

Milkweed Community #4: The Danger of Being Juicy

I noticed a few wasps (Polistes exclamans) cruising the milkweed patch during the sunny part of the days since the monarch caterpillars hatched. I know wasps hunt for caterpillars to feed their larvae. But I hoped the monarch caterpillars, being bad tasting, would not fall prey to these wasps. Still it seemed some of the caterpillars had, um, gone missing. The other day a really fat caterpillar, the biggest one, was gone. A wasp kept circling the area beneath the plant where this caterpillar had been, for all the world looking like she had dropped something into the underbrush below. I found the damaged body of a smaller monarch on the ground but never saw any sign of the big one again. Maybe it survived.

Or maybe not. Yes, these wasps do prey upon danaus plexippus. I watched as one of them cut a piece from a medium sized caterpillar and flew off with it, presumably to its nest.

Milkweed Community #3

When you say milkweed I think monarchs, and so it was with great joy that I saw a female monarch butterfly, Danaus plexippus, laying eggs on the plants in my humble but apparently good enough patch of Asclepias curassavica. The egg laying began around the last week of October, and these are some photos of the caterpillars moving through the growth stages necessary before they pupate.