Fragments From Floyd

Summertime: watching the grass grow (not to mention the weeds in the garden) while swatting “bugs” that circle your head like Tye Fighters around the Death Star.

But wait before you get out the Hot Shot for Flying Insects. Ever think about watching to see what it is those creatures are all about? Most could care less about finding the whites of your eyes or dive-bombing into your ears while you are hot and sweaty (gnats, some hovering flies, midges and mosquitoes notwithstanding.)

Take for instance those blue-black wasps you see around the house this time of year. They’re out there making the world safer for you spider-haters.

Here’s a sampling of anesthetized spiders from just a couple of the mud tubes where the mud-dauber houses the spider meals for its young. These spiders are alive, but quite sedated. You can hold them in your hand. Go on. You know you want to.

Elsewhere in the yard and garden, I noticed some bumblebees strangely curious about a certain patch of leaves on the flowering quince. Their surfaces were glossy and looked as if they would be sticky–maybe the droppings of smaller insects living under the leaves. I wondered, having read this BBC piece about bumblebees resorting to getting sugars from aphid secretions because they are not able to find the usual flowers to forage.

Nature is adaptable, up to a point. Bumblebees can change their feeding behavior in an emergency. It will get them by for a few weeks, but in the long run, some or all may not make it. You’ve heard of Colony Collapse Disorder in the honeybee. The wild bumblebees in the UK and possibly elsewhere are likewise at risk.

So paying attention to insect behavior may be a worthwhile passtime. As their world changes, so goes our own.

Stumble it!