Know Your Pollinators E-Book

Tim Harris

• Herausgeber: Old Pond Books
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Seitenzahl: 50

Beschreibung

Did you know a honeybee visits about 50 to 100 flowers during each nectar-collection trip? You'll discover loads of interesting facts about 35 common pollinating insects – from ladybugs, moths, and beetles to bees, wasps, flies, and butterflies – including appearance, history and breeding, and details of how to attract them to your garden. From ladybugs whose larvae love to munch on herbs like coriander, fennel, and dill, to nocturnal moths who prefer a flower's scent to its color, this fun and fascinating pocket guide will turn both young and old into pollinator enthusiasts.

Leseprobe

Know Your Pollinators

Old Pond Publishing is an imprint of Fox Chapel Publishers International Ltd.

Edited by D&N Publishing, Wiltshire, UK

Copyright © 2020 by Tim Harris and Fox Chapel Publishers International Ltd.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of Fox Chapel Publishers, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in an acknowledged review.

ISBN 978-1-912158-55-3 (paperback)

978-1-913618-07-0 (ebook)

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Fox Chapel Publishing, 903 Square Street, Mount Joy, PA 17552, U.S.A.

Fox Chapel Publishers International Ltd., 7 Danefield Road, Selsey (Chichester), West Sussex PO20 9DA, U.K.

www.oldpond.com

Front cover photos, from left to right: Honeybee, lime butterfly, and seven-spotted ladybug.

Back cover photos, from left to right: Bumblebee, seven-spotted ladybug, painted lady, and hornet mimic hoverfly.

Contents

Foreword

Bees and Wasps

1 Buff-tailed Bumblebee

2 Eastern Bumblebee

3 Brown-belted Bumblebee

4 Western Honeybee

5 Blueberry Digger

6 Violet Carpenter Bee

7 Eastern Carpenter Bee

8 Gooden’s Nomad Bee

9 Sandpit Mining Bee

10 Oblong Woolcarder Bee

11 Unequal Cellophane Bee

12 Gold-green Sweat Bee

13 Striped Sweat Bee

14 Blue Orchard Mason Bee

15 European Hornet

Hoverflies and Flower Flies

16 Hornet Mimic Hoverfly

17 Marmalade Hoverfly

18 Oblique Stripetail

19 Eastern Calligrapher

20 Large Bee Fly

Butterflies and Moths

21 Common Buckeye

22 Great Spangled Fritillary

23 Painted Lady

24 Monarch

25 Malachite

26 Mourning Cloak

27 Comma

28 Peacock

29 Cloudless Sulphur

30 Spicebush Swallowtail

31 Old World Swallowtail

32 Adonis Blue

33 Hummingbird Hawk-moth

34 White-lined Sphinx

35 Snowberry Clearwing

36 Jersey Tiger Moth

Beetles

37 Seven-spotted Ladybug

38 Swollen-thighed Beetle

39 Spotted Longhorn Beetle

40 Rose Chafer

Acknowledgements

Picture Credits

Monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) on thistle.

Foreword

The primary way in which plants create new generations is by producing seeds containing all the genetic information necessary to grow a new plant. Seeds are made when pollen is transferred from the stamen of one plant to the stigma of another, fertilizing it. This may be done by the wind, by water, or by animals. The animals responsible for this incredibly important transfer are called pollinators. They include bats and hummingbirds, but it is the insect pollinators that are the subject of this book: bees, butterflies, moths, hoverflies, and beetles. As well as being real heroes of the natural world, all are beautiful in their own way, and many can be attracted to your garden or backyard.

BEES AND WASPS

Buff-tailed bumblebee (Bombus terrestris) covered with pollen.

Bees are pollinators par excellence. More than 20,000 different kinds are known. Most visit flowers to suck up energy-giving nectar. Pollen—essential for the raising of young—attaches to a bee’s body as it moves from plant to plant. Some are more efficient pollen collectors than others. For example, hairy bumblebees have pollen-gathering “brushes” on various parts of their bodies. In moving from plant to plant, bees transfer pollen from the stamen of one flower to the stigma of the next, enabling pollination. Most of the pollen is taken back to the colony or the nest burrow to feed young bees.

The range of bee lifestyles is truly bewildering. In social species such as honeybees, female “workers” perform most of a colony’s important functions. There is a clear differentiation between breeding queens, nonbreeding workers, and male drones. The workers make honey from nectar, pollen, and enzymes produced in their stomach, and this provides food during the winter, when nectar and pollen are unavailable.

Most bees are solitary, however, with a single female establishing a nest and laying eggs. And still more bees are kleptoparasites, breaking into the nests of other bees to lay their own eggs inside. Closely related, wasps are predatory insects but since they also visit flowers, they are pollinators too.

1 Buff-tailed Bumblebee

Bombus terrestris

Characteristics

Length: Queen 0.71 in (18 mm); worker and male 0.51–0.55 in (13–14 mm).

Flight season: May–October.

Nectar sources: Very varied.

Habitat: Meadows, farmland, parks, gardens.

The large, furry, European bumblebee is a familiar sight as it forages on garden flowers. It can be identified by two orange “collars” on a black background, one near the neck and one on the abdomen. The tip of the abdomen is buff in queens and males, but whitish in workers.

After emerging from hibernation in spring, a queen will start foraging busily on flowers such as sallows, plums, cherries, and gorse—and she will pick an underground site for a new colony, often an old mouse nest. Once settled, she lays eggs, which hatch into larvae. When it reaches its peak, there may be more than 500 bees in a colony, most of them workers (all females), which perform most of its important functions: foraging for food at flowers as varied as knapweeds, daisies, lavender, deadnettles, and ivy, according to the season. The workers also defend the nest from attackers and care for the larvae. Male bees, or drones, hatch from unfertilized eggs; they leave the colony when they reach adulthood to go in search of a mate, their only function.

2 Eastern Bumblebee

Bombus impatiens

Characteristics

Length: Queen 0.67–0.82 in (17–21 mm); worker and male 0.39–0.67 in (10–17 mm).

Flight season: April–November.

Nectar sources: Very varied.

Habitat: Forest, farmland, parks, gardens.

This is one of North America’s most important pollinators. Abundant in the east, it is now used for greenhouse pollination in California and Mexico, far outside its natural range. It is a social insect. Workers fly from flower to flower to collect pollen; goldenrods are particularly popular nectar sources, along with thistles, apples, clovers, vetches, burdocks, rhododendrons, and tomatoes. Some pollen becomes attached to the bees’ hairy bodies and some is collected in “pollen baskets” on the legs. The workers take it back to the underground nest, which typically houses 300–500 bees.