Nine Native Bees You Should Know About

As domestic honeybee populations decline (Penn State University estimates hives are down almost 60 percent from 60 years ago), researchers are looking more closely at wild bees. There are at least 17,000 other species of bees globally, and 4,000 native bee species in North America. Although honeybees get all the attention, native bees can be efficient and sometimes superior pollinators compared to honeybees. For example, in one study researchers looking at 600 fields in 41 cropping systems found fruit set can increase twice as much with wild-insect visitation compared to honeybees.

The following is a listing of some of the common native bees you may find. [Source: USDA’s Bee Basics, An Introduction To Our Native Bees]

Blue Orchard Bee

Blue Orchard Bee

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1. Megachilidae

This family contains mason bees and leaf-cutter bees. The females use leaves and/or mud in their nest construction. Most of these bees nest in holes, either in wood or hollow twigs, but there are also a few that nest in the ground. There are a few species within this family that are not native to the United States, but that have been introduced either intentionally or unintentionally in this country. An interesting characteristic of the bees of this family is that they don’t carry the pollen on their back legs but on the underside of their abdomens.

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If you happen to see a bee, about the size of a honey bee, with a yellow belly dusted with pollen, you can be sure that it is a megachilid bee (although sometimes the color of the pollen it is carrying may be white). However, some megachilid bees carry such large yellow/orange loads of pollen that they look like flying “cheetos” snacks coming in for a landing at their nests.

The blue orchard bee, Osmia lignaria, of the western United States is being managed for the pollination of fruit trees (especially sweet cherries and almonds). Farmers are providing drilled boards as nesting sites. Already it is proving to be an excellent replacement for the beleaguered honey bee on a local, though not national, level. Much remains to be learned about convenient rearing and use of this beautiful blue bee.

Shiny metallic-blue, these bees are important pollinators. Mason bees fly fast and visit many flowers. They are active early in the spring and will fly in poor weather conditions, making them good pollinators for early blooming crops and flowers. Mason bees are solitary bees. Each female finds a nest in a tube-like cavity such as a hollow reed or hole. She stores food in the cavity, lays an egg and seals it with mud. Then she repeats this process until the tunnel is filled with eggs.

Crown Bees is one of many commercial suppliers of mason bees. A quick Google search should lead to several other suppliers.

 

bumble bee free image

2. Bumble bees

There are about 50 species of North American bumble bees. Many people are familiar with bumble bees. They are large, furry, and mostly black with stripes of yellow, white, or even bright orange. Bumble bees have some things in common with honey bees; they are more sociable than most other native bees, forming colonies with one queen and many workers. However, bumble bee colonies are never as big or as long lived as those of honey bees. Bumble bees are ground nesters with most making their nests in an underground cavity or in rare cases, above ground partly covered by thatch. The cavities they need for their nests are larger than those of solitary bees, so the first thing that a young queen does in the spring is to find an abandoned mouse nest or a similar burrow. Then she starts preparing it for her brood. She builds a few wax pots that she fills up with pollen and honey, and a larger cell for her brood. Once provisioned the queen lays her eggs, laying no more than half a dozen at first. These eldest offspring are all sterile female workers. Once this brood is fully grown, the queen rarely leaves the nest again and spends all her time laying more eggs while the workers take care of all the activities in and out of the nest.

The colony grows rapidly, and it can reach a population of a few hundred workers. The workers are usually smaller than the queen. It is after her first brood emerges that you will seldom observe large bumble bees foraging. Near the end of the summer, the queen lays male eggs in addition to female ones. The females emerging at this time become queens, not sterile workers, and they soon mate with the males after emerging from the nest. All workers, male bumble bees, and the old queen die at the end of summer. The only survivors are the new queens, which have already mated. They find a secluded hideaway to spend the winter and go to sleep. Then as winter gives way to spring and the willows begin to flower, the queens emerge and each will found a new colony.

Bumble bees and honey bees both have pollen baskets, called corbiculae, on their hind legs. They are more specialized than the pollen baskets of other bees, which are called scopae. In honey bees and bumble bees, the tibial segment of the hind leg is flattened, with rows of long, strong hairs along the edges. The shape of these baskets allows them to pack pollen, mixed with some nectar and saliva, into a tight mass called a corbicular pellet rather than the loose mass of pollen grains clinging to the hairs of the scopae of other bee species. A few species of bumble bee have become cuckoos, laying their eggs in the nests of other bumble bees. They have no need for workers or for pollen baskets.

Bumble bees are so effective at pollinating tomatoes that their buzz pollination services are put to good use in large greenhouses that grow tomatoes year round. All that is needed is a queen, a box for the nest, and a supply of sugar water because tomatoes produce abundant pollen but no nectar. The bumble bees are free to come and go but remain inside the greenhouse most of the time.

Bumble bees and their pollination services are a key component in agriculture. They are important pollinators of some clovers, a forage crop for cattle.

carpenter bee free image

 

3. Carpenter bees

Carpenter bees are typically large and black. You may have trouble telling them apart from bumble bees except for one very distinctive feature: bumble bees are fuzzy all over, while the upper abdomen of carpenter bees is almost hairless, appearing glossy. Early in the spring, males prospect for promising courtship and mating sites, not because they plan to set up housekeeping, but because they know that such places will attract females. They patrol the territory zealously chasing away other males that venture too close. In fact, sometimes they chase away almost anything that moves, including surprised human gardeners. Fortunately, they cannot sting (only females have stingers), so there is nothing to fear and you can let them be. Females have powerful mandibles and use them to excavate wide tunnel systems in which they build their nests, hence their common name of carpenter bee.

Carpenter bees are not always well-behaved pollinators. Occasionally, when a flower has a long throat that places the nectar out of reach of its tongue, the carpenter bee uses her sharp mouth parts to cut a slit at the base of the flower where the nectar is stored. She then drinks the nectar without coming near the pollen dispensing anthers or stigma of the flower. Thus, carpenter bees can be nectar robbers that cheat the flower instead of doing it a service in return for its nectar. Bumble bees are also capable of floral larceny. Look at the trumpet honeysuckles, horse mints, or abelias in your garden. You may find the telltale signs of these attacks, flowers with their throats slit by thirsty carpenter bees.

Small carpenter bees in the genus Ceratina are related to the larger carpenter bees, although you would never mistake them because of the size difference. They nest in pithy stems, such as blackberry brambles or roses rather than digging their own.

Squash bee free image

 

4. Squash bees

Squash bees (Peponapis and Xenoglossa) pollinate flowers of squash, pumpkins, melons, and other cucurbits. Peponapis squash bees are dependent only on the pollen cucurbits. Squash bees are about the same size and brownish coloration of honey bees. You can easily tell them apart by their behaviors when they are near flowers of these crops. Squash bees are finetuned to the daily rhythms of cucurbit flowers. They begin their work shift at or before dawn when the flowers of these valuable crop plants are opening.

They show no hesitation when approaching a squash flower, plunging right in, gathering pollen and/or nectar and quickly leaving. Honey bees, on the other hand, arrive later in the day once the flowers are past their prime. They also take extra time hovering over flowers and visiting them with a slower foraging tempo. Even with honey bee hives nearby, it is estimated that squash bees do many times more pollination per flower per unit time than honey bees. Cucurbit crop growers are very aware of their value as pollinators. These bees often nest underground beneath the very plants they will pollinate. If you are one of those who pick up your own pumpkin to make a Jack-o-lantern, you will be walking over nests full of developing young squash bees.

Southeastern Blueberry Bees free image USDA

 

5. Southeastern Blueberry Bees

The southeastern blueberry bee (Habropoda laboriosa) gets its common name from the fact that it forages primarily on blueberries (Vaccinium spp). Its native range is the southeastern United States. Southeastern blueberry bees are only active for a few weeks each year. It just so happens that their active season coincides with when blueberries are in flower. Compared to honey bees, blueberry bees are faster and more efficient pollinators of blueberry flowers. The reason for this is that the anthers of the blueberry flower are tubular with an opening pore only at one end. The southeastern blueberry bee attaches herself to the blueberry flower and vibrates her flight muscles very rapidly. Like shaking a salt shaker, pollen comes out of the opening of the anther and is collected by the southeastern blueberry bee. When she moves on to the next blueberry flower, her buzz pollination not only shakes out the pollen but causes pollen clinging to her body to attach to the stigma and pollinates the flower.

Triepeolus cuckoo bee on globemallow

 

6. Cuckoo Bees

One large group within the Apidae family, the Nomadinae, is made up exclusively of parasitic bees, the cuckoo bees. Nomada bees are usually red or yellow, sometimes with whitish markings. They have lost all the adaptations that serve to carry pollen as they don’t need to provision their young. They are nearly hairless and are wasp-like in general appearance. Many cuckoo bees parasitize the nests of bees in the family Andrenidae. They are often seen in early spring flying low over bare ground, searching for the nests of potential hosts. Once a cuckoo bee locates a nest, she waits nearby ready to sneak in and lay an egg while the busy female and rightful owner of the nest leaves in search of food. In some species of cuckoo bees, the female kills the larva as part of the process of parasitizing the nest. The egg of the cuckoo bee develops rapidly and grows into a larva that kills and eats the resident host larva in addition to the pollen and nectar food reserves inside the host cell.

Iridescent green sweat bee

 

7. Halictidae (sweat bees)

Some of the most beautiful bees belong to this family. With their shiny metallic-colored bodies, these bees will capture your heart. Many are metallic green, but others have shades of color from blue to copper or gold, and sometimes even black. Most nest in the ground. Some are solitary while others share the entrance to their nests. In most cases, that is all they share and are not truly social. However, a few sweat bee species go a step further and show some division of labor in guarding the entrance to their homes and rearing their young. Usually they are sisters that originated from the same nest. Some species of sweat bees can be considered truly social; with a division of labor in which the mother and founder of the colony lays eggs while the daughters do all the other work.

Some unusually attractive halictids (green, yellow and black-striped Agapostemon species) are found throughout North America. One of the prettiest halictid bees is Augochlora pura (the name means the pure magnificent green bee) found in the eastern United States. It has the peculiar habit of building her nest under the bark of a rotted log. She takes advantage of the loose, half-rotted material to make the housing, adding her own saliva and secretions to build an envelope for her eggs and accumulated pollen. She kneads the pollen into a number of little loaves shaped like tiles, which she then plasters on the inner wall of the brood chamber and then lays an egg before sealing the cell completely. This precaution is necessary due to foraging ants and other predators that abound under loose bark.

One interesting and commercially valuable halictid bee is the alkali bee, Nomia melanderi, of the western United States. As its name suggests, the alkali bee prefers to build its nest in alkaline soils. It often lives in dense aggregations (up to tens or hundreds of thousands of individuals). However, it is not social since each female constructs her own burrows and tends to her own brood, but lives compatibly with and in close proximity to other alkali bees. The alkali bee is a very good pollinator of alfalfa, and some growers take advantage of its nesting habits to manage this species to a limited extent. They supply the appropriate terrain for the alkali bee’s needs near alfalfa crops. The farmers even go so far as creating it artificially by using a tarp, covering it with clay, and watering it as needed to create nesting beds. Once established, these alkali bee beds can remain active for decades.

There are also some cuckoo bee species in this family, and just like the other cuckoo bees, they are almost hairless and somewhat wasp-like. Some have a bright red abdomen.

Andrenidae - Andrena agilissima

Andrenidae – Andrena agilissima

 

 

8. Andrenidae (miner bees)

The andrenid bees are all ground nesters and thus the common name miner bees. They are mostly dark, black, or reddish, but they can be metallic blue, yellow, or red and yellow. They are often shy, medium- to large-sized bees. They can be distinguished from other bees by the velvety patches (foveae) on their faces, between the eyes and the base of the antennae, though these patches are often visible only under a microscope. Many are active only in the early spring. The next generation remains underground developing through the summer, fall, and winter only to emerge the next spring when their favorite flowers are in bloom.

What would eastern forests be without azaleas? Their flowers are one of our native flowering plants that honey bees cannot pollinate. They don’t release their pollen like most flowers, but hold it inside the anthers waiting for a skillful bee that knows how to shake it, just like a saltshaker. Further the pollen clumps are tied together with sticky threads. Bumble bees and a number of solitary bees are good at pollinating azalea flowers. The Cornell azalea bee (Andrena cornelli) is one of them, a dark-colored, slender bee that is found in the eastern United States. It is never too far from azaleas because their pollen is its favorite food. Her pollen baskets have long, widely spaced hairs that are especially adapted to the texture and size of these flowers’ pollen clumps.

Andrenids are among the earliest bees to emerge in the spring. You will observe them visiting willows, maples, violets, and other early blooming spring wildflowers. Some andrenid bees are very good pollinators of apple blossoms.

Female Hylaeus bee concentrating nectar Colletidae bee family

 

9. Colletidae

This is a small family of solitary bees which is considered more primitive than other families of bees. Some of them such as the yellow-masked bees, Hylaeus, do not have baskets in which to carry pollen. Instead, these bees carry pollen inside their crops. They are not as hairy as other bees and can easily be mistaken for wasps. They all nest in pithy stems. Sometimes they form large aggregations of closely spaced nests. They use a cellophane-like material exuded from glands to line the brood cells where they lay their eggs; so sometimes they

Details On Other Pollinators

The Xerces Society is a great resource for information on all native pollinators. The society’s website, Xerces.org, provides identification and monitoring guides for a wide range of pollinator species, including bees, butterflies and hummingbirds, as well as tips on how to maintain native habitats and using these habitats to attract native species.

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