The Return of the Carders 🐝

 The annual reunion of a bee, a plant, and one who pays attention

I do not keep rigorous phenology records for my little patch of lamb's ears (Stachys byzantina), though perhaps I should. Still, I pay attention.

Every year, a moment comes when the soft silver leaves send up their flowering stalks and the first flush of purple appears. I am not entirely sure whether those purple parts are petals or sepals, but the effect is always the same: as soon as I see that color, I feel a small jolt of anticipation, because I know the wool carder bees are on their way.

Not long after the flowers begin to bloom, there they are. It felt as though I waited a little longer this year, and I should probably record the interval between flowering and the bees' arrival. The lives of solitary bees are brief, and the individuals I see today are almost certainly descendants of those I watched last year, continuing a relationship that has likely persisted in this small patch for generations.

The male wool carder bee (Anthidium manicatum) is usually the first one I notice. This year, I spotted him patrolling a nearby patch of beardtongue before returning to the lamb's ears. He saw me and hovered at eye level, impossibly confident for a bee scarcely larger than a fingernail. There is something almost confrontational about the way he faces me, suspended in the air as though evaluating whether I belong in his territory.

"Hey, woman. Leave my patch and my girl alone. I am watching youI"

Male wool carder bees are famous for this behavior. Rather than defending a colony, they defend patches of flowers rich in nectar, chasing away rivals and almost anything else that enters their airspace. Few bees make their territoriality so obvious.

Soon his attention shifted to a female moving among the flowers. He rushed toward her with an enthusiasm that seemed only partly welcome, while she carried on with the business at hand. She fed among the flowers and visited the leaves, scraping their soft hairs with her mandibles. Those fibers will line the brood cells where the next generation develops, giving wool carder bees their name.

What fascinates me is that both bee and plant arrived here from elsewhere. Lamb's ears originated in western Asia. The wool carder bee evolved across Eurasia and was first recorded in North America in 1963, and has since spread widely. Yet they arrived carrying an old familiarity with one another. The female still gathers the woolly fibers. The male still patrols the flowers. Behaviors shaped long before either reached New England.

A plant and a bee, both far from their ancestral ranges, still performing behaviors shaped by a much older evolutionary history. The female gathers plant fibers. The male patrols his territory with grand confidence.

And I find myself watching. The purple appears. The carders return.

📷 European Woolcarder Bee · Anthidie à Manchettes (Anthidium manicatum) | © Claire O'Neill, please credit accordingly. | EwA Buggy observation (first seasonal record at my patch) → here