Bug Squad

It's time to pop open a bottle of champagne and do a happy dance. Finally, finally, we saw a yellow-faced bumble bee (Bombus vosnesenskii) in our yard. After a 20-year absence.

You've probably seen carpenter bees engage in the practice known as "nectar robbing." Due to their large size, they cannot enter tubelike blossoms such as salvia (sage), so they slit the base of the corolla. They rob the nectar without pollinating the flower.

Pollen-packing honey bees dangling from gaura (Gaura linheimeri) are a joy to photograph. Gaura, native to Louisiana, Texas and Mexico, is a long-stemmed plant with a burst of pinkish-white petals that resemble whirling butterflies.

Don't know if silence is GOLDEN, but Italian honey bees definitely are. Early morning Saturday, I watched a bee the color of liquid gold nectaring the lavender in our yard. A golden opportunity to capture her brilliance. She won't live long.

Carpenter bees (Xylocopata tabaniformis orpifex) can't get enough of the day lilies in our yard. In the early morning, they buzz into the patch of day lilies to forage for nectar and pollen. When they're finished, it's easy to tell where they've been: they're covered with telltale yellow pollen.