One day this past week I decided to eat my lunch, which was yogurt, out on the patio of the Walter Reichardt House at the Arboretum. The old stone house is always cold, so I sat in the sun and closed my eyes for a moment to enjoy the heat. And then I heard them: Frenzied bees or wasps feeding on the last flowers of the summer. We gardeners notice such things, and not only that, we want to know exactly what species we are seeing. Luckily, one of our gardening staff knows about these pollinators, and identified two different species of paper wasps--one native, one European--covering the white flowers of a native buckwheat.
We sat on the warm flagstone and watched them for a bit, mesmerized by the constant motion. They paid us no mind, probably because they werein hyperphagia (a state of compulsive eating). This their time to eat--to gorge, really, before they die. (Bears and prairie dogs are hyperphagic at this time of year as well, eating and eating to get ready for hibernation.)
I eventually moved to a bench, knowing that as soon as I opened my yogurt I would have company. Indeed, one of the native paper wasps came over and shared my yogurt with me, so close that I could see his mandibles working. I've always gotten along with bees and wasps (at least the non-Africanized). I'm not sure why, but I have read a number of theories: That they can sense fear and an elevated heart rate, smell adrenaline, react to sudden movements, and that honey bees may even "know" their keepers. I am not afraid of them, and I think they know that.
For the past 15 years, I've had the good fortune to work alongside and learn from people who pay attention and are mostly fearless. Gardeners, naturalists, trackers, botanists, biologists, and environmental educators; we are a quirky bunch, and care about stuff that most people probably don't even notice. And we are outside a lot. While some of what we know may be purely anecdotal, anecdotes can add up to data. "Citizen science" provides a number of organizations with real data from folks who are watching monarch butterflies, counting birds, and reporting bloom times of plants.
We do know that some pollinators are in trouble, like honey bees and monarchs, and for the first time in the US, a bumblebee has been added to the Endangered Species List. The rusty-patched bumblebee, once common, has lost 90% of its population. The reasons are the usual: loss of habitat, diseases and parasites, pesticides, and climate change.
I recently read a piece in the New York Times called "The Silence of the Bugs." Apparently, flying insects all over the world are in decline, a devastating prospect given our reliance on pollinators. And we really don't know why. We have theories of course, but as the article points out, we have a dearth of field biologists and naturalists.
What we don't have is a dearth of gardeners, who are often naturalists. We can be among those who are collecting data simply because we are outside and paying attention. Many nonprofits need our help: The Southwest Monarch Study, Project Budburst, the Cornell Great Backyard Bird Count and the Xerxes Society. What better way to put our skills to work.
Lynne Nemeth is the Executive Director of The Arboretum at Flagstaff. To contact her with ideas or comments, please email Lynne.Nemeth@thearb.org.
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