Last year, I discovered a population of rare bees. Melissodes mitchelli specializes in prickly pear flowers, which limits where and when we might find it. I found the bee, by chance, in the Munson Sandhills, the only population of the bee in the Florida panhandle. But north Florida has a few intact sandhill habitats, and prickly pears also grow by beach dunes as well. Naturally, I wanted to find the bee in other locations.
In February, we recorded an episode of Coast to Canopy about sandhill restoration along Crooked Creek, a steephead ravine in Gadsden County. As we sat there chatting afterwards in the studio, it hit me. “You guys probably have a lot of prickly pears on your properties.”
They did indeed. Helen Roth and I found a date that worked out for both of our schedules, and had to hope that the weather cooperated.
Maybe she and her partners had Melissodes mitchelli, and maybe they didn’t. The hunt is the thing, especially when the habitat is good. That’s my favorite thing about a nature mission. When you’re in a healthy habitat and you’re paying attention to the little things, you as often as not find more than you’re looking for.
It’s true anywhere, but especially in a place like Crooked Creek. They’re restoring sandhill surrounding steephead ravines, havens for rare and endemic plant species. I would not leave without seeing something of interest.
Searching the sandhill and its diverse wildflowers
Well, it rained overnight. Helen and I were waiting for Scott Copeland, looking at a handful of small prickly pears near her small parking area. None had flowers, but the butterflyweed was in full bloom.
Our first adventure of the morning was crossing the creek to the sandhill on the other side. Helen lost her bridge, so we could either go around the long way, or at full speed over the creek and as fast as possible up the slope. A little rush to start the morning, and not too rough.
We made for a road separating her property from Annie Schmidt’s. Helen’s property already had longleaf pine, when she started restoration, but it had been fire excluded. She has been removing the hardwood growth between the pines to make space for ground cover plants. Annie’s property was a sand pine plantation. To restore the original longleaf canopy, she had to clearcut the sand pines. On her side of the road, young knee-high to human-height longleaf poke out from grasses and sedges.
We started on Helen’s side, where we were treated to a nice selection of Florida sandhill plants we find in bloom in mid-May.
A month-and-a-half after this excursion, I visited Florida’s newest state park with our FSU Sustainable Fellow for the summer, Anna Bullock. At Shoal River Headwaters State Park, we saw plenty of gopher apple and greater Florida spurge along with wiregrass, bluestem grass, as well as other sandhill plants. They were all on the shoulder between the trail and a fire-excluded pine canopy overgrown with hardwood trees. Look for that post soon. Crooked Creek is a good example of how these plants thrive when a sandhill is restored and burned regularly.
Lastly, another Euphorbia endemic to the Coastal Plain:
Something’s in those prickly pear flowers…
Over on Annie’s side, we find more prickly pears, though the flowers, at first, are soggy, and have not opened.
I see a face looking out at me from an unopened prickly pear flower. Because I remember our target bee looking out at me in the same way last May, I wait to see if it emerges. It seems pretty confirmable there, though. Scott finds a twig and starts to loosen the petals, and that was not a bee face looking out.
Finally, we find open flowers with bees. Not Melissodes mitchelli, but this is a step in the right direction.
It has been a grey, dreary morning full of soggy prickly pear flowers. The company is good, though, and we were never more than a few steps away from some interesting wildflower or insect. Things were starting to get interesting, and about to be more so. Before we head to the next location, let’s see some of the other insects we found here.
Because I love to share insect photos, a few more:
Running along the open sand, we find insects visiting Coastal Plain dawnflower (Stylisma patens):
And here’s another bee fly. They are a diverse group.
And an insect from one my favorite families of predatory flies:
Another prickly pear pollen specialist
Scott hopped on the back of the UTV and served as a spotter as we continued down the road as it circled around Annie’s property, where it butts up to Susan Carr’s property.
We are constantly stopping – there are very many prickly pear flowers here. And, there are bees larger than sweat bees.
This, I believe, is another specialist bee. The southeastern woodboorer (Lithurgopsis gibbosa) is a cactus specialist, and that includes prickly pears.
This bee is in the leafcutter family, bees that store pollen on their abdomens. This may have been a newly emerged bee, as I don’t see a yellow coating of pollen yet.
After photographing a few of these bees, we headed to the next location. On the way there, we found this cute critter:
A steephead ravine excursion
Since I was out there, why not take a detour into a steephead ravine where s state-listed plant is in bloom? But first, Helen showed off her chainsaw skills for the camera:
Impediment cleared, we continued to a spot where Helen knew there was Alabama milkvine.
Alabama milkvine is listed as endangered in Florida. Helen tells me that, downstream of her property on Crooked Creek, Billy Boothe has Florida milkvine on his property. I need to get out to Billy’s property with a camera.
Near the vine, I found this menacingly colored stink bug:
And, finally, Melissodes mitchelli
Yes, we did find the bee, on another section of Annie Schmidt’s property. We’d been searching for hours, and I wasn’t especially hopeful at this point. But, like I said before, the searching is the thing. If you’re a person who likes to snoop around nature looking for some small thing to fascinate you, it’s never a bad day when you find others to join in.
Of course, finding the rare bees and plants and everything else is cool. But then, so are predatory stink bugs and robber flies, to me at least. And a plant doesn’t have to be rare to be beautiful, and to play its part in a diverse ecosystem that’s coming together through years of hard work.
A bee crawls out and around the flower, and I take as many photos as I can.
I upload the photos to iNaturalist and tag Clint Gibson, a bee researcher I consulted when I produced a short video about Melissodes mitchelli last year. He confirmed the identification, and so here’s a second population of this rare bee in the Florida panhandle.
After uploading these photos, I ended up in a great conversation with a photographer who’s writing a bee field guide. She said that in some of the photos I took, the bands of white hairs seemed to rest on the apical, outer edge of each segment. But she told me that she hesitates to make IDs based on iNaturalist photos, which are not always as detailed as they need to be for that purpose. Also, other similar-looking longhorn species pollinate prickly pears. She did say that she knows and trusts Clint’s identifications.
I mention this only to remind us that iNaturalist is an imperfect tool for insect identification, even when we take close photos and experts review them. The visual data is still valuable, as is the location. If it’s an interesting enough species, researchers can always check out a location they may never have thought to check otherwise.
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