Sweet Corn!

We just had our first sweet corn out of the garden. This is Bodacious, which is the early corn. Later we'll have Kandy Korn corn.

What a Sticky Mess

Apparently pollen from Rose of Sharon (Hibiscus syriacus) is particularly sticky. This poor bee is covered in it and had some trouble flying because of it.

It kept trying to wipe the pollen off its back and eyes. I hope its hive mates were able to get it all off.

I had seen bees elsewhere in the yard with some of this pollen on them and I was wondering where it came from. I'd heard that bees only go to one type of flower per trip from the hive, but this bee looks like its been to the Rose of Sharon before coming to this rudbeckia. The pollen in its pollen baskets on its legs is a much deeper orange color than the white pollen of the rose of sharon stuck on its face.

And this bee on the mint has Rose of Sharon pollen on it as well.

Broccoli!

It's that time of year when we have more broccoli that we know what to do with. This head will last for several meals for three people.

After growing different varieties over the years, we've settled on Belstar for the nice heads it produces.

Peponapis pruinosa Probably Pollinated the Pilgrim's Pie Pumpkins Perfectly

I'd always heard that honey bees were necessary for pollination for many of the plants we eat. That is quite true, but there are some plants that are pollinated quite well by our native pollinators.
This is especially true for New World plants - plants that originated in our hemisphere. Pumpkins are native to North America, so they have been pollinated by North American pollinators for a very long time. One such pollinator, and probably the most important pumpkin pollinator is the squash bee.
The pumpkin bloom is a short live bloom that doesn't even last an entire day, the squash bee rises early in the morning, before the honey bee, to visit the pumpkin flowers and the blooms of other cucurbits. In my garden, the pumpkins and squash blooms are full of the squash bee Peponapis pruinosa from early in the morning until the blooms close up. Sometimes I see a honey bee try to get into the flower but she often gives up when she sees it already full of these other, honey bee sized, long horned bees.
Peponapis pruinosa is a solitary bee that nests in the ground. They dig holes for their nests near the pumpkins and squash that they pollinate. This may explain some of the holes I see in the ground near the garden.
The most common view I have of them is of their butts sticking up out of the flowers.

Gooseberries

Almost 30 years ago we picked up some gooseberry bushes planted in milk cartons at a garage sale in Boulder, Co. We planted them at our house in Thornton, Colorado then, when we moved to Jefferson County, we took them with us. They have been growing in the front yard ever since.

There are three gooseberry bushes. They are deciduous bushes that bloom in the spring, fruit in the summer, and turn color in the fall. The berries ripen sometime around the middle of July. When that happens, I have to beat the birds to them if I want to get a good crop.

We have no clue if these are any particular variety of gooseberry, but they do turn deep reddish purple and are quite sweet when ripe. Picking is the easy part since they pull of the bush easily and are so easy to reach despite the bush having prickles. The time consuming part comes afterwards when the berries all have to have their stems and dead flower parts removed.

The stems are very firmly attached to the berry and don't just pull of without squishing the fruit. So it has to be pinched or cut off. At the other end is the old, dried up flower which also has to be pinched off.

Once I get all the stems and flower bits removed, I pour them into freezer bags and freeze them. Later, I use them in fruit crisps, make oatmeal squares with them or even use them as a topping on a cheesecake. Maybe I'll make jam with them someday.

Bees Dancing on the Front Porch

For almost a week the bees of hive 6 have been washboarding. Washboarding is the term used for bees rhythmically rocking back and forth in a large group. While it sort of looks like they could be scrubbing the hive, nobody really knows why they do it. Studies have shown that it is going on inside the hive as well as outside at the entrance. Here is a closer view.

The Ecumenical Sunday Sunflower Service for Bees

This past Sunday I was out taking pictures of the sunflowers and noticed four different species of bee on this particular blossom. All bees seemed to be getting along fine. Several of them are species I hadn't noticed before.

In the upper left was a Long Horned bee, Melissodes  Subgenus Eumelissodes. It was a fat bee about the size of a honeybee, with legs covered in yellow pollen.

In the upper right, there was a little green sweat bee. I've seen them before.

 In the lower right was a little bee that is new to me, Pseudopanurgus.

 And closer to the center was the familiar honeybee.