Sarracenia leucophylla: Attention Bee Trap (English subtitles)
With its shiningly white patterned leaves Sarracenia leucophylla is certainly one of the most distinctive pitcher plants. We observed the impact of this large carnivore's attractivity to insects in the surroundings quite coincidentally in summer 2019. Suddenly, a whole ant colony had vanished that we observed for weeks in the frame of experiments with Venus flytraps. Looking for the reason, we did not only find the missing ants. Thereby, we unfortunately also found many dead honey bees. We kept an eye on this during the season, which confirmed that the white patterned leaves of Sarracenia leucophylla capture predominantly honey bees - at least with us.
With several plants some hundreds of them may be captured during a season, about what no beekeepers around will be happy. Therefore, we decided to close the pitchers with cotton-wool plugs which does no harm except of the prey loss. Instead of bees they get now a little fertilizer, which also works. However, at the natural environment also Sarracenia leucophylla has its enemies like the moth Exyra, which skillfull and savely uses the pitcher traps for its own peculiar purposes ...