ML139309
People
Contributor
Date
Location
- Age
- Not specified
- Sex
- Not specified
- Playback
- Not specified
Media notes
Subject 1: (Interview). Subtitle: Stephen Buchmann. Timecode In: 00:05:35. Timecode out: 00:24:24. Notes: Buzz pollination. Subject 2: (Anthophora). Subtitle: Buzz pollination. Timecode In: 00:56:36. Timecode out: 00:56:54. Behaviors: mechanical sound. Subject 3: (Anthophora). Subtitle: Buzz pollination. Timecode In: 01:25:42. Timecode out: 01:25:53. Behaviors: mechanical sound. Habitat: Suburban. Equipment Notes: Stereo=1; Decoded MS stereo. NPR/NGS RADIO EXPEDITIONS Bees DAT 4 Sept. 26, 1996 Tucson, AZ out in a field waiting to hear buzz pollination Chuck -in suburban neighborhood -goal to record buzz pollination -dogs, cars, and other neighborhood sounds in bg 1:42-2:47 -ambi -bg of suburban neighborhood, faint roar of hwy, birds chirping 2:48 -SB & CT talking about bee situation (SB amazed hwy is so loud bc they are miles from it) 3:48 SB -We just have to wait by the patches -little Cassia covesii. ... 5:02-5:35 ambi of area -cars and birds in bg 5:35 SB -ah. we've got a buzzing bee. couldn't tell what it was, but I saw a dark bee, possibly a sentras, buzzing, vibrating the flowers. i've lost sight of it now we'll see if she shows up again. hum. don't know where she went. 6:37 This is the one we are looking at here, Cassia, almost identical in color to this. 8:26 SB -With this many plants we ought to be getting some visitation, I don't know what is going on. possibly bc of the intense rain yesterday, it was cool this morning, possibly taking the native ground nesting bees a while to dig out from their muddy nest after the intense rain fall yesterday. So it's worth waiting and watching by these patches of cassia. G 10:03-12:08 ambi -with a horse, dogs, birds (good bc it creates a very familiar scene, one that many can identify with -so this would be good to emphasize that buzz pollination goes on literally in your own backyard. 12:36 SB -the bees we are after are large. so they are at least honey bee size or bigger. another thing i am expecting to see is the very large black and yellow sunorum bumble bee. it should be on these plants ...that was a fast flying sentras -black and brown. it never landed on the flower, but came in quickly. so it is possibly that we are just a little early yet. 13:20 stop down 13:24 Once a bee comes into a patch you will find that they are spending about a second per flower. they will buzz, they will back off and hover and come back. they will tend to work every flower. they are a little spooky so you could chase them off with the boom. but once they are on a flower you can kind of move in slowly and steadily... 14:18 CT -so, why do these bees buzz pollinate one plant and not another. why don't they buzz pollinate all of the plants? 14:27 SB -They only buzz or sonicate a small proportion of the world's flowering plants. Well actually it is not so small. it is about 8% of the world's plants. but just as I have picked this flower -the cassia flower in my hand, and as we look at it we can see it has 5 petals and t has 5 anthers, the structures w/in the flowers that hold the pollen grains the DNA bearing particles. These are little round spheres and they are hidden away inside here. If you hold your hand up and bring your fingers together and form kind of a cone and imagine 2 holes ¬little pores at the tip of each finger -then you visualize this flower perfectly. And those tens of thousands of pollen grains are hiding away locked safely and sound in those anthers until the bees come by, and then a flying bee whether it is a sentras, a bombas, or a Anthophora, will come up, land, grab onto the flowers tightly with their mandibles, essentially their teeth, and then curl the body around into a tight c posture, and once they have taken up that posture you will hear a buzz. it is like someone giving you the raspberry or perhaps the Br... (Notes truncated)
Additional species
- Anthophora
Technical information
- Recorder
- SONY TCD-D7
- Microphone
- Accessories
Archival information
- Cataloged
- 5 May 2005 - Ben Brotman
- Digitized
- 5 May 2005 - Ben Brotman
- Edited
- 5 May 2005 - Ben Brotman