damselflies and giant bees

Category: bethie's world | Posted: Sat Jun 24, 2006 6:49 pm

I chased this damselfly for two days to get his picture. He just kept eluding me.

He has a beautiful metallic tail that looks blue or green according to the light. He reminds me of the aluminum tumblers my grandmother had. He is an ebony jewelwing. This morning my hubby and I had went our seperate ways. Him to cut some glass at the shop and me to work on some other glass at the dining room table. That's a room with a great view and good music too. I prefer it to the dingy dark shop. My Rick came tapping on the door for me and we went down to the little creek that runs next to our yard. There was 6 beautiful ebony jewelwings flitting in and out of the sun streaks. Some were females

and while not as colorful as the males, when they started slowly folding their wings in and out they looked like beautiful black lace gloves. They flitted and mated in the streaky sunpots and then the females landed in the mud next to some scrubby plants and began to lay eggs! Turns out they lay eggs into the plant stems. They just flitted and courted and sparked and the sun beat down and the quiet tranquility of the day was mesmerizing. Then we decided we better get back to business. As I walked back to the house I heard my husband say, "man that was great". And it surely was.
My vitex trees are in full bloom and are just covered with bees

We got right under it and enjoyed the pure Beeliciousness of it all. The buzz was right in our ears and flowers were dropping from all the activity. I noticed several of a bee I did not recognize and took his picture.

I sent his pic to my favorite bug site-what's that bug.com and they didn't know. They consulted Their expert and he said they are Giant Resin Bees. They just got to America in 1994 from Asia they believe via ship. They are tracking this bee as it spreads. It lives in the holes carpenter bees make but does not make those detrimental holes itself. It seemed a very gentle bee and payed me no mind at all. All in all, a great day in the natural world here.

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eileen wrote on Sat Jun 24, 2006 8:31 pm:

Ahhhh Bethie I sooo enjoyed reading that!! I could almost feel myself ther with you both watching the damselflies and listening to the bees. There's just nothing to beat Mother Nature is there?