Non-honey bees

Do you know those silly quizzes in social media? I made one for you, and it’s about dating. Let me know if you need more illustrations in this series.

Let’s go:

Do you know these cute little fluffy bees who mercilessly bully all other bees coming into their territory? The European wool carder bee (Anthidium manicatum) males are larger that females and have sharp mandibles and spines on the abdomen – all that helps them fight. Nobody stays on their territory for long – except for the females of their own species.

When a female of the ivy bee (Colletes hederae) comes out of her natal nest, she is immediately surrounded by the crowd of males ready to mate. In all this chaos, she somehow manages to mate with only one male. In solitary bees, mating balls are a more common phenomenon, as are females mating only once in a lifetime. I have three other cartoons about mating balls: here, here and here.

In bees, males don’t actively help in brood care – with some notable exceptions. Male of Ceratina nigrolabiata guards nest entrance in order to keep parasites off when the female is away collecting pollen. Cute, isn’t it? I had a cartoon about these bees here.

And the last are honeybees making a guest appearance on the Non-honey bees blog. I hope nobody identifies with them in their love life! It’s really, really creepy. Honeybee queen mates multiple times. Drones, on the other hand, die during mating – their genitalia explode and detach from their body, part of them remaining attached to the queen’s abdomen.