1 August 2014

July is the time when bees have wars.  I knew nothing about this until Facebook-friend Chad Steele described a war at his hive on July 21.

Chad wrote, “During a walk yesterday there was a huge cloud of bees all around and over the hive. At first I thought they were swarming. But looking closer, it appeared that there was another swarm trying to get into the hive, especially where I just put on the new boxes.  I got even closer and saw bees fighting each other to the death.”

I asked my bee-keeping friend, Joan Guerin, to tell me more.  She explained that in July there’s a dearth of nectar because spring flowers have finished and late summer flowers have not ramped up.  Hungry bees go scouting for nectar and when they find a colony with weak defenses they try to get in.  Successful scouts go back home and recruit more invaders.  The war is on!

Chad found this out first-hand.  Wearing his bee-keeping gear, “I got into the fray again, inside the older boxes, and pulled out a frame to get some idea what was occurring… And I was surprised to see hundreds of bees uncapping the honey cells, and drinking it!! Occasionally there was one being attacked by another bee…  The cloud of bees was huge and after putting the frame back I concluded that this was a takeover.”

The drama began silently a few months before.  Chad figured out that the queen had died in late May or June and no queen succeeded her.  With no new eggs and bees being born in the colony the worker population dwindled.  By July Chad’s hive was a much smaller group, unable to defend their colony.

Ultimately, the invaders stole the honey and the old hives’ workers completely died out.  Chad has left two boxes in place in hopes that a honeybee swarm, looking for a new home, will come in and start a new colony.  “That is how we got this one, so it could happen again. Especially since there is obviously a strong hive somewhere nearby …Time will tell.“

Watch the video above to see bees attack a few invaders at a hive in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Who knew that honeybees fight to the death in hand-to-hand combat?  I learn something new every day.

(video from YouTube by TulsaCountyBees)

28 July 2014

If you’re afraid of snakes, please pretend this is a big “S” or close your eyes while you read.

I’m inspired to write about eastern hognose snakes today because summer is prime time for reptiles in Pennsylvania and a remark made in the PA Herps Facebook group has stuck with me since last winter: “The only way to get bitten by a hognose snake is to smell like its prey.”

The eastern hognose snake (Heterodon platirhinos) is native from Minnesota to southern New Hampshire, from Florida to eastern Texas.  It is more than two feet long and comes in so many colors and patterns that it defies an easy description.

I imagine that during summer’s heat I might see a hognose snake but the chance is slim.  I don’t look for snakes because I can’t identify most of them and some are poisonous.  My caution prevents discovery.

However, this snake is safe.  Very safe.  He won’t bite but he may scare you.  Wikipedia describes his defensive behavior:

When threatened, the neck is flattened and the head is raised off the ground, not unlike a cobra. [Cobra!!]  They also hiss and will strike, but they do not attempt to bite. The result can be likened to a high speed head-butt. If this threat display does not work to deter a would-be predator, a hognose snake will often roll onto its back and play dead, going so far as to emit a foul musk from its cloaca and let its tongue hang out of its mouth.

— description of eastern hognose snake, wikipedia

If I managed to get close to a calm hognose I’d see why he has this name — an upturned nose like a hog.

But I’m not eager to get so close. If I scared him, the “cobra act” would frighten me. The “high speed head-butt” would certainly make me scream.  Both the snake and I would be lolling on the ground with our tongues hanging out.

S is for Sometimes Scary.

p.s. Despite the tone of this article, I am not afraid of snakes.

(photo of an eastern hognose snake from Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons license.  I have horizontally flipped the original image to make an S. Click on the image to see the original at Wikimedia)

On Fourth of July weekend I was hiking at First Landing State Park in Virginia Beach when I noticed an odd-looking pine cone in the dappled shade next to the trail.  I paused to look more closely.

It’s not just a pine cone!

Here’s a better look.

… and this view from a different angle.

After two minutes of my ever-closer approach this lizard had had enough and ran away.

I know nothing about lizards so I googled images for a “brown lizard sandy shore Virginia” and found a photo whose description said “Matches the pine cone.”  How cool is that!  Someone else had photographed an eastern fence lizard on a pine cone.

I also found out that …

• The eastern fence lizard (Sceloporus undulatus) is native to the eastern U.S. and southern Pennsylvania.  Theoretically I should have seen one in all my years of hiking near Pittsburgh but this is a first for me.  (I’ll admit I haven’t been looking very hard.)
• Their scales are keeled, a feature you can see in the photos.
• Eastern fence lizards are sexually dimorphic.  This one is female because her throat and flanks are whitish where adult males are shiny blue.  During the mating season males flash their blue bellies to attract the ladies and tell other guys, “This is my territory.” Click here to see the male’s amazing underside.
• That flashy blue behavior is risky.  Flashy males are more likely to be eaten by birds.
• In 2009 Penn State biologist Tracy Langkilde reported that eastern fence lizards who live where there are fire ants have longer legs than their predecessors 70 years ago — an example of evolution in action. They’ve also learned to twitch instead of freeze when they encounter the voracious ants that can kill them in less than a minute.

I’m glad I stopped to examine that pine cone.  I usually say, “Keep looking up” but it pays to look down sometimes, too.

(photos by Kate St. John)

Here’s a beautiful close-up of two hover flies mating on a chicory flower, taken by Shawn Collins with his macro lens.

Who knew that the female is larger than the male? That their eyes are different colors? That they have knobs on their heads … Are those antennae?

Awesome photo!

Click here to browse Shawn’s photostream on Flickr.

p.s. Oh no!  Yesterday Shawn’s Canon T3i died on an Err 30 while photographing marbled godwits and willets at Conneaut Harbor, Ohio.  Bad break!  He’ll be camera-less until next Saturday.  🙁

(photo by Shawn Collins)

UPDATE: These are yellow poplar weevils (Odontopus calceatus), related to but technically not billbugs (Sphenophorus genus). The title has the wrong name but is impossible to change.

7 July 2014

A week ago these bugs were everywhere, so many that they made the news.

I noticed them on June 30 when I saw more than twenty tiny dark bugs perched on the outside of my office window.  What bugs were these, why were there so many of them, and why were they on the window?

Other people encountered the bugs too — at poolsides, on car roofs, in backyards — and they were scared because the bugs looked like engorged ticks.

Though close in size, I can tell these are not ticks because:

• Ticks have 8 legs. These bugs have 6 legs. (Ticks are Arachnids, related to spiders.)
• Ticks don’t have wings.  These bugs have wings under their elytra (wing covers) and though they weren’t flying very much I saw a few of them raise their wing covers and suddenly fly away.
• Ticks do not have snouts.  These bugs have snouts like inflexible elephants’ trunks.
• Ticks never swarm .. and that’s what these bugs were doing.

Using Google and BugGuide.net I narrowed their identity to some sort of snout and bark weevil.  But which one?  And why were there so many of them?

Meanwhile public fear and misunderstanding prompted KDKA to call the Allegheny County Health Department’s Entymologist, Bill Todaro for information.  He knew what they were right away: Yellow Poplar Weevils.  They eat only plants, never bite people, and swarm in late June because they’re looking for a member of the opposite sex to mate with.

Here’s an annotated closeup of one of the weevils on my office window.  This is a view of his underside because he was outside on the glass.

So, they were really nothing to worry about.  They were courting.  We just never noticed them before.

(photos by Kate St. John)

UPDATE 18 June 2015: Ben Coulter and Monica Miller have identified this weevil as Odontopus calceatus, a.k.a. Yellow Poplar Weevil, not Curculio as I read in the paper last year(*).   Don’t believe everything you read in the paper!

29 June 2014

If you’re like me, you’re in the midst of a low spot in the birding year.  There are lots of birds in Pennsylvania right now but they’re secretive because they’re nesting. They’re going to stop singing in July.  Sigh.  It’s a bummer. Check out this graph of the birders’ emotional year to see what I mean.

However, it’s Bug Season. Beautiful bugs are here to fill our need for color on the wing.

In June 2012 Charlie Hickey and his wife watched for dragonflies to emerge from the lake at their backyard in Berks County.  He posted this Calico Pennant (Celithemis elisa), above, on the day it first appeared, June 5.

As June unfolds more dragonflies appear, clothed in many colors.

Eastern Pondhawks are blue and green. This pair is mating.

Eastern amberwings are golden orange.

Widow Skimmers are blackish-brown and white.

And my very favorite, the ebony jewelwing damselfly, is iridescent blue-green with velvet black wings.

See more dragonfly colors on the wing in Charlie’s Odonata album. 

(photos by Charlie Hickey)

9 April 2014

Because I live in the city, I have to leave home to hear frogs calling.  Though there are streams and a wetland in Schenley Park, the wetland is too recently restored and probably too isolated to have spring peepers.  The park is surrounded by dense city neighborhoods and all of its water flows into a mile-long culvert that takes it to the Monongahela River. Where would frogs and fish come from?  Not from downstream.

So I was delighted to hear spring peepers (Pseudacris crucifer) by the Sunken Garden Trail at Moraine State Park last Sunday, 6 April 2014.  I made a point of sitting near the wetland, surrounded by their sound.  Hundreds of them called in front of me but I couldn’t see even one because they’re so small and good at hiding.  The video above (from Wisconsin) shows how tiny they are.

As a group the peepers were almost deafening but I heard two wood frogs and a single creaking sound among them.  It sounded like a western chorus frog but it was probably an angry spring peeper.  Wikipedia says, “As in other frogs, an aggressive call is made [by spring peepers] when densities are high. This call is a rising trill closely resembling the breeding call of the southern chorus frog.”

The video below gives you an idea of what I heard.  Listen for the quacking of wood frogs at the beginning.

Jeepers creepers, do you hear the peepers?

Update: Check the comments for places where readers have heard peepers in the City!

(videos from YouTube)

This month I wrote about ducks that sound like frogs.  Here are some frogs that sound like ducks.

Wood frogs are often the first frogs to appear in the spring in eastern North America, quickly followed by spring peepers.  As the video indicates temperatures have to be in the 40s for the wood frogs to “wake up,” but western Pennsylvania hasn’t had a lot of warm weather yet.

The cold winter has made a difference.  Two years ago we had an exceptionally warm spring and the frogs came out in early March.  This year we’ve had a few blips of warm weather surrounded by temperatures in the teens, a discouraging combination for cold-blooded frogs.

Today we’re headed for a spate for warm weather that may signal the end of winter’s grip.  We’ll know it’s really spring when we hear frogs calling.

Have you heard any wood frogs yet?

(video from Great Smoky Mountains Association)