Diario de little_mousie

Many of the Andrena nests are closing out down here and I'm wondering about predation and loss as I look in on empty holes. I've seen Andrena in the jaws of spiders and am guessing there are other bad things that can happen. Today I only saw one bee face looking up at me from the nest holes and saw a 2nd bee fly from its hole.

I set my camera up on a hole that looked larger than most hoping for a Pacific Digger Bee in a less densely populated area where I find Andrena nests. What I saw was a very small red Bee or Wasp enter the hole and then leave rather suddenly. The clip is about 7 seconds long and I made screen captures to post here.

https://youtu.be/BH9rz-7KUoQ

@beespeaker @wenatcheeb @la4bonte

I spent way too much time watching a Furrow Bee doing guard duty at the front of the nest hole. Not much exciting went on but there were a few celebrity walk throughs. I don't really think the star of the show was a Nomad Bee even though I did see one in the area. But it is still the closest guess I have.

Here is the clip; https://youtu.be/p8RhW2AKZE8

Both of these videos are best at X2 speed. The Speed control is under the gear tool.

I sat and recorded an hour of new nest building behavior today. I think the bee is one of the recent Andrena that just started flying and foraging but I don't know for sure. Could be a Furrow Bees Genus Halictus, I'm the first to say I don't really know the bees. The bee never came out of the hole far enough to see. I started recording this nest 2 days ago in this video;

https://youtu.be/8tMtyrZdc3c

The nest entrance has now turned 90 Deg from vertical and opens to the east at the top of an east facing slope. Near the end of the video I place a penny next to the entrance to make it easier to find tomorrow or when ever the weather improves enough to go look again. I feel like seeing who comes out of the hole is the best way to know who lives in it.

https://youtu.be/1ZRY-sUqzg0

The last picture in the set of screen caps associated with this entry is a look up hill at the nest site I'm recording in.

In my first past here I was looking at an Andrena aggregation out on top of the grass waiting for the sun to come out from behind the clouds and warm their flight muscles enough to fly and have their breeding swarm. It really perplexed me at the time.

I went back to the aggregation as the Daisies were just starting to open. Every open flower had a crab spider and I wondered if they were getting a push towards a grass preference. But that really only lasted a few days and then enough daisies were open to resolve the threat.

Now it is a jungle out there. The bees have to climb in and climb out. The bees also seem to like landing to check out the nest, flying off and looking some more and then landing again before going down the hole. You can see that in both of these videos the first is down at the site photographed in the associated observation.

https://youtu.be/_pi5WB1n-aw

This 2nd clip is in the 2nd aggregation I found but the same behavior is there. It is also my poster child for the pollen load can change the appearance of a bee. The 2nd associated observation shows abdominal stripes recolored by pollen. This bee has a black abdomen with black hairs. the yellowish color is pollen.

https://youtu.be/D7Wqch90-xg

I've been making video's of Andrena working on their nests, coming and going to forage etc.... I've been seeing something that looks like a "Mothers room" near the entrance to the nest. This nest belongs to a mid season Andrena Species and rain has washed away the loose dirt covering the nest structures. At the top of the shaft she builds a right angle entrance to the shaft and I think the bulb in the structure near the opening is mom's "guard shack" / bedroom where she stands guard when not working down with the brood to exclude predators and parasites. Does any one Know if I'm right?

@wenatcheeb @beespeaker @eebee @augustjackson

Earth Moving Bee
https://youtu.be/8tMtyrZdc3c

This next clip is a continuation of nest work from "Earth Moving Bee"
Bee excavating nest & building nest entrance
https://youtu.be/1ZRY-sUqzg0

This next clip is a vertical shaft style nest. When I recorded it I thought she was obtaining material for the closure from inside the shaft, but I've seen other bees taking refuge in an upper chamber of the nest.

Bee Butts
https://youtu.be/gZabWAas0Wo

I recorded 2 very different sized Andrena in side by side holes today. The first bee to show its self was very small compared to the bee on its right. The small bee is harder to see, it doesn't stay out of its hole long it could be a Furrow Bee, or both could have been Andrena. Can there be that much size difference in a single species of Andrena or have I caught 2 different species of Andrena or two different geniuses of bees living side by side in the same aggregation? After the bee on the left completes its first appearance, hit pause and drag the progress bar to the 8 minute mark and continue watching. Little Bee will poke its face out again then Big Bee will start coming out. It will dance around a little then do some grass acrobatics before flying off.

https://youtu.be/UI_AtzngE1o

@wenatcheeb @beespeaker @augustjackson

Little Bee does not appear to be parasitic in the nest she has moved into. She was recorded Returning to the nest at least six times from forage for pollen yesterday. I missed at least one return trip to the nest due to rain and maybe one for an unusually long camera battery change. Needed a fresh one from the charger at home.

I changed my camera angle in part because I don't leave behind Tripod targets for next day set up though I should think about making 1 or 2, and in part to better show the difference in size of the bee that lives in the hole now compared to the Andrena that probably dug the nest originally This was a very busy nest site yesterday with a few spiders, a spider hunting wasp and a 2nd Andrena not from the nest shown in my last blog post.

https://youtu.be/HXlX-ommXVI

This is a spider hunting wasp that specializes in burrowing spiders like the trap door spider. It is hunting within an Andrena Bee nesting aggregation that covers roughly 4 acres of land. It enters the scene from the top of the frame about 1/4 of the way in from the right hand corner, travels in a roundabout fashion to the top Andrena nest hole and dives in looking for a spider. I don't know what happened down there, but it looks like the Wasp is struggling to escape. When it does it runs around a bit and looks in another Bee hole. this time it doesn't stay long and leaves the frame under the cover of grass.

https://youtu.be/qRTPTPhbkTg

@wenatcheeb @beespeaker @la4bonte @bobmcd @arachnologus