Category: Species

I have highlighted a few of the species that I come across here on the farm.

Beware the Houdini Fly!

Last year (2023), I first heard about the Houdini fly and I posted a message here about them occurring in the Duncan Area. Recently while i have been cleaning out my tubes I have found them in two of the locations where I provide bee boxes for my neighbours . One was in the Tower Point area  where most of the tubes in one bee house were affected. The other was in the William Head area of Metchosin.

So it is essential that any old boxes with tubes should be eliminated or cleaned regularly if they are going to be reused. The Houdini flay maggots will consume all the cocoons in a tube . They are much larger than the Mono wasp larvae which are always inside a cocoon case.  Also note the twisted purple mass of what I assume are feces

From Wikkipedia:

Cacoxenus indagator is a species of fruit fly.[1] It is a kleptoparasite, laying its eggs in the pollen-filled nest cells of mason bees.[2] On account of its ability to break out of those cells once hatched, it is commonly known as the Houdini fly.[3][4]

Scientific classification
Kingdom:
Animalia
Phylum:
Arthropoda
Class:
Insecta
Order:
Diptera
Family:
Drosophilidae
Genus:
Cacoxenus
Species:
C. indagator
Binomial name
Cacoxenus indagator

Loew, 1858[1]

Harvesting Phragmites Reed grass stems from the Marsh for Mason Bee Homes..

I was fortunate to have on our property, a brackish water estuarine marsh in which grows the native Phragmites sp. reed grass.

See this file on the Gooch creek swamp which tells the story of how I had to “save” the Reed Grass beds from extirpation by the BC Forest Lands and Natural Resources Department: (FLNRO)phragmiteskalleFrom Phragmites australis (Cav.) Trin. ex Steud. subsp. americanus I get the hollow tubes that I use for the mason bee homes. This is what they look like in late summer.

phragmites
At this stage it is too early to cut the stems. That is best done in February

 

In about 1 in 20 plants, the stems  are the ideal size for Mason Bees.

The tubes are cut in the early spring from the lower 1 metre of the stems.

The internode lengths range from 15 cm. to 30 cm .  I select only those sections with an adequate tube diameter. 5/16 ” diameter is ideal.

Since this reed grass is not generally available, it is easiest to sandwich small plates  of wood with 5/16″ channels routered or sawn into them . There are many references on the internet that show how to do this.

See this post on Harvesting and Cleaning the Mason Bees in the fall.

New species of mason bee showing up in some Phragmites tubes from last year

One house had a better-than-average set of mason bee tubes filled, but many ended up with very few cocoons.

The past season was not a good one for mason bees on southern Vancouver island. Cool temperatures delayed hatching and there was poor fertilization in some of the locations . I had mason bee houses stocked with Phragmites tubes and mason bee cocoons in eight different farms of neighbours.

As I have been cleaning out the tubes and getting the cocoons in the refrigerator for storage, I have noticed a significant increase in a species of native mason bee that is much smaller than the native blue orchard bees.

 

 

Another interesting observation. was that at the bottom of the tube below the cocoons in several tubes there was a pocket of the dead but hatched parasitic mono wasps..  I cant explain that one (my best hopes would be that this smaller mason bee cocoon has some super power over the parasitic wasps…lol)

Identification of Wasp Larvae from Mason Bee tubes

ARCHIVAL: This post has been re-dated from 2016 in order to position it closer in the blog to Mason Bee Information

Wings held partly erect.
Wings held partly erect.

In the previous post I indicated I was trying to identify wasps that had taken up residence in mason bee tubes, without actually parasitizing the mason bees

 

 

largewasplarvaeI found the larvae in tubes while removing the mason bee cocoons in the winter, and transferred them to a separate jar where I  let them hatch. By May 1 they were hatching so after taking a few pictures, I sent the images off to BugGuide.

The result after several months was an identification by an expert in entomology : Our thanks to  Matthias Buck of  The Invertebrate Zoology Section, Royal Alberta Museum, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
http://bugguide.net/node/view/1218699#2158789

So he thinks there are actually three species represented in these pictures.

Food
Eumenines prey mainly upon moth larvae, although some take larvae of leaf-feeding beetles.
Adults take nectar.
Classification

Kingdom Animalia (Animals)
Phylum Arthropoda (Arthropods)
Subphylum Hexapoda (Hexapods)
Class Insecta (Insects)
Order Hymenoptera (Ants, Bees, Wasps and Sawflies)
No Taxon (Aculeata – Ants, Bees and Stinging Wasps)
Superfamily Vespoidea (Yellowjackets and Hornets, Paper Wasps; Potter, Mason and Pollen Wasps and allies)
Family Vespidae (Yellowjackets and Hornets, Paper Wasps; Potter, Mason and Pollen Wasps)
Subfamily Eumeninae (Potter and Mason Wasps)
Genus Ancistrocerus

There were three species identified from my photographs( labelled above) although it is very difficult to confirm identity without being able to examine a specimen. Next year I will be sure to send him samples to confirm, and I will certainly not destroy these larvae when cleaning out mason bee tubes.

iNaturalist postings— Garry Fletcher, Metchosin BC

 

I have been posting my photos of different species I have encountered on the iNaturalist website.  Many are species I have found here in the Metchosin Community.

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=any&user_id=garryfletcher&verifiable=any

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Pileated Woodpecker at feeder

Other woodpeckers have been using the suet feeder outside my window this winter  but this was the first time I had seen the Pileated woodpecker here. The photo was taken hastily through the salt-sprayed window while at my desk, thus the blur! We often see and hear these woodpeckers in the summer as they like the large old fir and alder trees along the property.


Scientific classification:
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Aves
Order: Piciformes
Family: Picidae
Genus: Dryocopus
Species: D. pileatus
Binomial name
Dryocopus pileatus (Linnaeus, 1758)

Azolla the floating fern – a Nitrogen fixer through a symbiotic relationship.

In August the bloom of Azolla has started to increase. I added Azolla to the pond several years ago and have in the past had to skim it off as it covers the complete surface in late summer. It does provide good compost material  with high Carbon and Nitrogen content.  It normally cannot live in Northern climates but somehow has survived well here in the pond.2015-08-06azolla2s

There is a theory called the “Azolla event ” where it is believed that Azolla in the tropical Arctic 39 million years ago fixed so much Carbon that it reversed global warming. Reference .

A good reference can be found at the Azolla Foundation

“Azolla is a unique plant that can help reduce man-made climate change and provide biofertilizer, livestock feed, food and renewable energy anywhere in the world.

The Azolla Foundation was set  up by Azolla Biosystems Ltd founders Alexandra and Jonathan Bujak to provide a platform for sharing information about Azolla and its contribution to new technologies such as space exploration and planetary colonization.”

Also, the Nitrogen Fixation is the result of a sysmbiotic relationship between azolla and a cyanobacteria. This reference shows the formula for the process:

2015-08-06azollacu
Azolla ssp and the large green leaves are Lemna, Duckweed

Kingdom: Plantae
Division: Pteridophyta
Class: Polypodiopsida
Pteridopsida (disputed)
Order: Salviniales
Family: Salviniaceae
Genus: Azolla
Type species
A. filiculoides