Last weekend while home visiting friends and family, I had the great pleasure to visit the Jacksonville Arboretum.  This 120 acre nature preserve and arboretum, located in east Jax near Arlington, is a beautiful place for a hike or picnic.

There are lots of trails that loop around the preserves' dozen or so habitat types including a depression marsh, estuary, rosemary scrub, and pine flatwoods.  Much of the trails are shaded and many of the plants are labeled with their scientific and common names.

While walking on one of the trails we stumbled upon a queen bumble bee (Bombus sp.) searching for a nest site.  She was flying low along the ground and even entered a few small holes and depression in the leaves.  Check out this picture I got of her crawling into a small hole she found between pine needles and leaves.  Bumble bees usually construct their nests in abandoned rodent burrows and in the spring they search out these potential nest sites.  If you want to learn more about bumble bees, check out this new book Bumble Bees of North America.

We also noticed some evidence of leaf-cutter bees (Megachile spp.) on some of the plants along the trail.  These perfect circles are cut using the strong cutting mandibles (jaws) by female bees constructing their nest.  They use these leaf pieces to line the inside of their nests, which protect them from moisture and mold.  If you were to dig up a leaf-cutter bee nest it would look like a green leafy cigar.  These leaves are from Chinkapin (Castanea pumila).

We also saw the leaves of Dwarf Huckleberry (Gaylussacia dumosa) cut by leaf-cutter bees.  This plant is in the Ericaceae family (Blueberry family) and when it was flowering was probably visited by the Southeastern Blueberry bee (Habropoda laboriosa) and bumble bees (Bombus spp.).  We encountered lot's of plants in this family, including sparkleberry (Vaccinium arboreum) and rusty lyonia (Lyonia ferruginea).

Check out some more pics from this awesome arboretum and garden!

Greetings!

Just wanted everyone to know that I will be presenting a 3-min. breakfast briefing at the North American Pollinator Protection Campaign (NAPPC) annual meeting in D.C. this year.  I plan to share results of the GTM NERR native bee survey, website usage stats, and info about GTM's annual Pollinator Day that I helped start.  This is a great way for me to share the important work that has been done in NE FL.


NAPPC's mission is to encourage the health of resident and migratory pollinating animals in North America. NAPPC partners gather from throughout the North American continent and beyond to:

• Raise public awareness and education and promote constructive dialogue about pollinators’ importance to agriculture, ecosystem health, and food supplies;

• Encourage collaborative, working partnerships among participants and with federal, state and local government entities and strengthening the network of associated organizations working on behalf of pollinators;
  
  
• Promote conservation, protection and restoration of pollinator habitat;
  
  
• Document and support scientific, economic and policy research - creating the first-ever, international data bank (library) of pollinator information.

Greetings fellow bee lovers!!  I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Kelly Johnson, the amazing writer of Wings, Worms, and Wonder!  In celebration of National Honey Bee Month, Kelly asked me to share my knowledge of native bees, so that all our wonderful bee pollinators were highlighted.

Check out my interview HERE!

Check out my guest post HERE!

To order your own copy of Wings, Worms, and Wonder:  A Guide for Creatively Integrating Gardening and Outdoor Learning into Children's Lives visit her page: Wings, Worms, and Wonder!

Since I am now out of the state and can't photograph all those great Florida natives, I ask YOU to help in that department! 

Please send photos directly to jaime@floridasnativebees.com.  I'll add a new page to the website with all your great photos, and I'll try to identify the bees in the pics.  Give me as much information about the photo as you can (date, location, and flower name).

Thanks, and I look forward to seeing all my old favorite bees!!

Well folks the 2012 GTM NERR bee survey is complete and that means we have 2 years of data gathered!  So far, we have identified 95 species of bees, with a couple more coming down the road.  I'd say that's pretty good considering there are roughly 315 species in Florida. 

As soon as all the bees are completely ID'd I'll get a final species list up on the website.  I'd like to say a special thanks to my volunteers Joan Kramer, Michael Silvis, and Terry Williams for their dedication and excellent work these last 2 years.  I couldn't have done it without them.  Dr. Glenn Hall and I are working hard at getting all the bees identified and it looks like we already have some interesting things to report in the near future.

I just got back from 10 days in Arizona participating in this year's Bee Course!  What a great time I had meeting all the teachers and other students.  There were folks from all over the world that came to take this course.  The scenery was beautiful, as was the weather, and the bee diversity there blew my mind!  I can't wait to take my new found bee knowledge and pass it on to others.

Thanks to Jerry, Terry, Robbin, Jason, Jack, Steve, and Gretchen for a great class.  The South West Research Station in Portal was beautiful and very accomodating.  Wish I could attend every year!

Come check out the first Wings and Wildflowers festival this year!  I'll be giving a talk and workshop (more details to come) and will have a table set up on Saturday, Sept. 29th!  Come learn about birds, butterflies, bees and all their favorite flowers at this great new festival.  More information on speakers can be found here:  Wings and Wildflowers.  Hope to see you all then!