PORTFOLIO
Poppy appeal
As Remembrance Day approaches, we celebrate the poppy bee, a leafcutter that lines its underground brood chamber using poppy petals
Clinging on (above)
German photographer Solvin Zankl went looking for the endangered poppy bee (Osmia papaveris) after becoming fascinated by solitary bees, which make up the vast majority of the world’s 20,000 or so bee species. He photographed this population, one of Germany’s last, in the Bavarian village of Kemmern.
Poppy pilferer
Poppy bees hatch from underground brood chambers in early summer, the females immediately starting to dig new brood chambers, the males seeking out females to mate with. Brood chambers are lined with pieces cut from poppy. Adults bees feed on the nectar and pollen of poppies, then collect pollen as a food store for their larvae once hatched.
Digging it
It takes a female poppy bee about two days to make each brood chamber, the first two hours of which is spent digging a hole 5cm deep. She carefully transports the extracted soil away so as not to give any signs of the location of the brood chamber to predators.
Busy bee
Poppy bees emerge from their brood chambers at the same time as the poppies start to bloom, from late May to early June. The females build about eight brood chambers over the course of their three-to-four-week lives before collapsing from exhaustion.
Precious cargo
So numerous are the poppy bees in Kemmern that all Solvin had to do to photograph them in action was choose a poppy and wait for a bee to arrive. Once it has used its mandibles to cut a fingernail-sized piece of petal, the bee bundles it up for the journey back to the brood chamber, where it’s flattened out against the walls.
Flower power
As well as the common poppy (Papaver rhoeas), poppy bees sometimes use cornflower (Centaurea cyanus) petals to line their brood chambers.
Quick work
It takes only 20 seconds for the bee to land, cut a piece of petal and fly off with it, which means Solvin has to work fast if he wants to get his shot. Fortunately, the bees tend to return to the same flowers again and again before moving onto the next bloom.
Light fantastic
To catch the poppy bees in flight, Solvin used a special high-speed camera controlled by an infrared trigger. A beam of infrared light is set up parallel to the ground above the brood chamber and the camera is released every time a bee passes through the beam. “When it works, it’s amazing,” says Solvin.
In ages past
Traditional farming creates the ideal habitat for the poppy bee: wildflowers thrive in the verges between small fields, and the passage of modestlysized tractors ensures sufficient open ground for the bee to dig its brood chamber. Kemmern is one of very few communities left that practise such methods.
Lucky shot
While Solvin’s other pictures of the bees in flight were taken with a high-speed camera, this one of a female hovering over her brood chamber, a piece of petal bundled beneath her thorax, was taken with a normal camera. “I set up the camera from above and everything worked out!” he says.
Spider snack
Solvin watched several poppy bees break free after getting caught in oak spider (Aculepeira ceropegia) webs but this individual was not to be so lucky, alas. Perhaps, he suggests, her strength was gone after weeks of non-stop digging and lining of brood chambers. In which case, of course, she will have fulfilled her biological destiny as each of those brood chambers will contain an egg. Those eggs will hatch in a matter of days but it will be many months before her young emerge from their nests next summer, ready to begin the whole cycle again.
Crimson chamber
“She puts the petal in and turns around. As she comes back out she uses her legs to push it against the walls of the hole so it doesn’t cave in,” says Solvin. The bee’s building work complete, she packs the bottom of the nest with pollen and lays a single egg. She then folds over the tops of the petals and covers them with sand, rendering her handiwork totally invisible.
Rain check
During the day, the only time the poppy bee pauses in its work is when it starts to rain or the temperature drops below a certain level. At that point, the female will shelter in a halfcompleted brood chamber, or perhaps inside a poppy.
Wasted effort
Because the poppy bee digs its brood chamber on agricultural land, there are occasions when nests are destroyed by farm vehicles. While regrettable, such accidents give Solvin the chance to reveal the bee’s creation: this shot shows the bee egg sitting upon its store of pollen.
Rosy future?
Pollen sticks to dense hairs called scopa (Latin for ‘broom’) on the legs and body of the poppy bee, making transportation back to the brood chamber easy, but the preservation of the margins and meadows that hold such pollen-rich poppy blooms will be essential for the survival of this perfectly adapted bee.
ABOUT THE PHOTOGRAPHER
Solvin Zankl is an award-winning wildlife photographer based in Kiel, Germany. He has over 30 years’ experience shooting the natural world, with a focus on tiny creatures that we tend to overlook. You can see more of his work and his anthologies by visiting solvinzankl.com.