Non-honey bees

Cuckoo clock

Would you like to have a cuckoo clock like this?

The common cuckoo (Cuculus canorus) is well known for its distinctive call, and for the fact that females don’t build their own nests but lay eggs in the nests of other bird species. Since the 17th century, little figurines of cuckoos have been placed in a special type of clock. At every full hour the bird pops out of a cuckoo clock, and the number of its calls indicates the time.

What does this have to do with bees? There is a group of species whose reproductive strategy is almost exactly the same. They are called parasitic bees or cuckoo bees. In most species, the female sneaks into the nest of her host (another bee species) and lays her eggs there. Some species, like cuckoo bumblebees, invade a colony of the host and replace the queen in her function. About 25% of bee species in Poland are cuckoos, and I’m very fond of them. They have cool strategies that help them to get into the host’s nest and hide their eggs, and often don’t resemble a popular image of a bee at all. In the cartoon you see a Nomada. Members of this genus have little hair and vivid colours, and resemble wasps.

This cartoon was inspired by a conversation with a friend who prefers to stay anonymous (thank you! 😉 ).

This post was published on Instagram in cooperation with The Pollinator Academy. I’m happy to be involved in this initiative. If you are interested to learn about European pollinator species, in particular bees, hoverflies and butterflies, and recognizing them, check out the PA website!

April 13, 2026
Easter egg

Happy Easter!

As on a black-and-white cartoon it may be hard to tell the species, I’ll tell you that it’s Colletes cunicularius – a spring solitary bee common in Europe, and Sphecodes albilabris – its cuckoo.

Many species of cuckoo bees sneak into the host’s nest when it’s open, to lay their eggs inside. If they encounter their host, it may pay no attention to the intruder (I had a cartoon about it) or a fight may start. Sphecodes are quite aggressive and they often kill the host.

April 6, 2026

bees, cuckoo bees, wildbees
You are what you eat

The Grey-backed Mining Bee (Andrena vaga) is one of signs of spring in Europe. It is a pollen specialist (oligolectic) species, and the females collect pollen only from willows (Salix). I didn’t notice that before but the fluffy fur on their thorax is strikingly similar in colour and texture to the hairy willow catkins before they become covered in yellow stamens.

March 30, 2026
Spammer

Spam is, basically, an unwanted mail appearing in large numbers, right? Wild bees might feel like being spammed by commercially sold bees, then.

Recently an important opinion paper by MacIvor and Irvin was published. The authors draw attention to the problem appearing when bee solitary bee cocoons are sold on a large scale. Why buy bee cocoons at all? They don’t make honey or wax but are great pollinators, and can be used in commercial orchards for that purpose. They are also often are reared as a hobby, or are bought by people who think that breeding bees is a way of helping them (actually, it is not).

There is too little oversight of the sale of bee cocoons. They can be shipped for large distances, even to the places where the sold bees aren’t a native species. At their destination, they are released into the environment and can interact freely with local species, competing and sharing pathogens and parasites with them. Even if they are shipped to the areas where they are a native species, they may belong to other subspecies or lineage. During interbreeding with wild conspecifics, the gene pools are mixed and that also can have negative consequences for the local populations.

The authors call for legal regulations which would allow to prevent large-distance mailing of wild bees. For now, everybody can help to make the situation better – just don’t buy bee cocoons from distant places, check what species you’re buying and if it’s native, and above all, don’t buy bees at all unless you really need to.

March 23, 2026

mason bees, osmia
European Red List of Bees

Just a few weeks ago a new edition of the Red List of Bees of Europe was published by IUCN. I was one of the co-authors. It replaces the Red List published in 2014. In this edition, more species could be moved from the DD (data deficient) category, which is assigned when we don’t have enough information to say anything about their status, to the more informative categories: LC (least concern), NT (near threatened), VU (vulnerable), EN (endangered), or CR (critically endangered).

The Red List can be downloaded here, and if you want to look for details of a given species, you can search for it on the IUCN page.

PS And the bees on the drawing are blood bees (genus Sphecodes). Most members of this genus have more or less red colouration.

March 16, 2026
Spring is coming

Today I have a spring drawing for you. This is the common carder bumblebee (Bombus pascuorum), one of the most numerous bumblebees in the area where I live. It is by no means the easiest to identify, though. Its colouration is very variable and some colour forms are strikingly similar to other bumblebee species.

Bumblebees are said to have innate preference for blue colour. It means that a bumblebee that has never seen flowers before will be more attracted to blue ones. I don’t know how universal it is – I found research done only on a few species. What is interesting, there is some degree of individual variation in colour preference – not all bumblebees and all colonies of the same species like exactly the same colour.

The innate preference can be quickly modified after a young bumblebee starts foraging, and learns which flowers are most rewarding in her environment. Therefore, we can see bumblebees foraging on all colours of flowers (even on red ones – see my previous post!)

March 9, 2026
Happy Women’s Day!

Today is the International Women’s Day. Best wishes to all female readers of my blog! It’s a good opportunity to mention that the world of bees is ruled by females. And no, I’m not referring to the queens of social bee colonies. In fact, they are not as powerful as their title suggests.

What I mean is that the vast majority of tasks is done by females, without any assistance from the opposite sex. Females collect food for their offspring, build nests and (in some species) actively protect them from predators and parasites. In social species, all the workers are female and they care for their siblings and the queen. Most (but not all) of the bees you see on the flowers on a warm summer’s day are likely to be females.

And what do the males do in the world of bees? Their role is also very important, though much smaller. But that’s a topic for another post 🙂

March 8, 2026
Place to nest

As you surely remember, there are over 20 000 bee species described by scientists so far. No wonder that among so many species, there is also a substantial diversity of nesting strategies. Most species nest in the soil, a smaller proportion chooses various cavities above ground, some make constructions from mud or resin. You can find a bee nest in a snail shell, plant gall or a termite mound.

The level of specialisation also differs between species – some bees are very choosy when it comes to nesting, others can be more flexible. The most creative species I know is the red mason bee (Osmia bicornis) – a common European species, which is often bred for pollination purposes. Females nest in pre-existing long and narrow cavities of about 4-8 mm in diameter – typically, hollow plant straws or holes in wood made by other insects. However, some females can nest in keyholes, nail holes, cracks in window frames, rolled-up carpets and a many other man-made cavities of various sizes. Once I saw a photo of a nest made in a bicycle wheel.

This post was published on Instagram in cooperation with The Pollinator Academy. I’m happy to be involved in this initiative. If you are interested to learn about European pollinator species, in particular bees, hoverflies and butterflies, and recognizing them, check out the PA website!

March 2, 2026
Color-blind

Have you heard that bees can’t see the red color? I guess so. Maybe you even read that in some of my posts. Recently, I stumbled upon two papers, one by Chittka and Waser, published in 1997, and a bit more recent one, by Martinez-Harms et al. (2009). And these papers, especially the first one, have shown me that the issue of bee color vision isn’t so black and white (pun intended). Let me explain it a bit below, but I strongly recommend you reading the original papers.

Bees are trichromats, as we are, which means that they have three types of receptors in their eyes, each type sensitive to different light wavelengths. We can see the wavelengths from, basically, violet to red, whereas bees can also see UV, and they are less sensitive to the red part of the spectrum. However, they are not completely blind to red: one of the receptor types is sensitive to wavelengths which humans could well describe as red color. So, a monochromatic red object will not be black to bee.

But then, although bees can see the red light, they seem not to be able to see red as fully distinct color. If you show them monochromatic green, yellow, orange or red light, the bees will perceive them as the same or very similar hues, but they will differ in their brightness. As Chittka and Waser put it, “for example, a monochromatic red light of strong intensity will generate the same sensation as a green light of moderate intensity”. So, you can trick a bee into believing there is no color difference between the two stimuli if you cleverly choose wavelengths and light intensities for them.

But the story doesn’t end here! In real life, bees rarely have to do with monochromatic objects. What an eye perceives as a given color, is usually a mix of different wavelengths. Therefore, it is much less likely that a red flower will so perfectly match a green background that it will be invisible to bees. If it reflects light of some shorter wavelengths in addition to the red ones, it’s easy – a bee can distinguish its colors well. If it reflects only red light, however, she will rely on brightness contrast, which will be a bit more demanding but still possible. It was observed that bees foraging on “truly red” flowers take more time flying between distant inflorescences than between flowers of other colors, probably because locating them is more challenging.

And regarding the cartoon, the hummingbirds are quite justified in speaking about color-blindness of the bumblebee, as their color vision is amazing, better than bees’ and ours. The bumblebee in the cartoon is Bombus dahlbomii, the rare South American species which is known for its love of red flowers.

February 23, 2026

bees, nature, pollinators
Inappropriate gift

Happy Valentine’s Day!

You love bees and want to do something for them? Dont be ‘that guy’. Don’t buy hives. Increasing the domesticated honeybee population doesn’t do any good for bees. In fact, it can harm both the wild species and honeybees.

February 14, 2026

beekeeping, honeybees, honey, hive, valentine’s day
Tear-drinking bees again

I hope you don’t have yet enough of them! Here is the first post about these bees where you can learn more about them and find a link to a very interesting paper.

February 9, 2026

bee, bees, insects, justyna kierat, nonhoneybees, wild bees, wildbees
Don’t bring them inside!

In a temperate, seasonal climate bees spend winter in diapause. They usually overwinter as prepupae (that is, as a larva that ate everything it could and is ready for pupation) or, more rarely, as adults. I often hear from people who have bee hotels in their gardens, or who breed red mason bees as a hobby, that they are afraid that their bees will freeze in winter. They want to put them somewhere in a sheltered and warm place to help them survive. Actually, it’s a very bad idea. The bee species native to the seasonal environment are not only adapted to survive low temperatures. They may simply need them! The red mason bee, one of the best studied solitary bee species, can endure about -30°C (-22°F) but constant temperature of about a dozen Celsius degrees can cause trouble. When kept in a room temperature, the red mason bees may emerge in the middle of winter or die in the cocoon. It sometimes happens when a female built her nest inside a house, or the nest was brought home, either accidentally or purposefully (in an attempt to ‘keep the bees warm’).

Bringing the nests home for winter is not the biggest threat for overwintering bees. More disturbing is the climate change, manifesting itself with higher mean temperatures, but also warmer and shorter winters.

This post was published on Instagram in cooperation with The Pollinator Academy. I’m happy to be involved in this initiative. If you are interested to learn about pollinators, in particular bees, hoverflies and butterflies, and recognizing them, check out the PA website!

February 2, 2026

bee, bees, insects, nature, nonhoneybees, osmia, wild bees, wildbees, winter