Recently, I had the pleasure of admiring a nesting aggregation of my beloved ivy bees in the company of other melittologists. At one point, I heard someone say, ‘Here’s the waiting ball.’ As you might have guessed, I misheard — it was actually the mating ball. But my imagination began to run: what should a waiting ball of bees look like? You can see my idea here.
I first posted this cartoon on my social media. I wasn’t sure if you would find it funny, but after receiving positive feedback, I decided to share it here as well.
I drew this cartoon during a bee identification course. It was excellent… and intensive! We worked so much on identification keys that they became my first association with the word ‘key’ 😉
It’s a third year with the ivy bee (Colletes hederae) present in my country, and I’m still excited about it. I will be looking for them soon. Did you know that the ivy bee, which loves ivy so much that its flight period is fine-tuned to the flowering of this plant, is actually not a pollen specialist? In the absence of ivy flowers, it can visit heather or Asteraceae, for example. When foraging on these plants, I imagine it can quite easily be confused with other Colletes species, especially the closely related Heather Colletes (Colletes succinctus). The latter is also polylectic, with a strong preference for Ericaceae.
Parasitic bees are known as ‘cuckoos’ because they do not build nests or care for their offspring. Most of them sneak into the nests of other bee species when the owner bee is out collecting food, or open nests that have already been closed and are unguarded, and lay their own eggs there. With solitary bees, it is quite easy to find a moment when the mother is away. In colonies of social species, however, there is usually somebody home. Cuckoo bumblebees solve this problem by fighting and replacing the queen, making them more social parasites than classic “cuckoos”. Blood bees (genus Sphecodes) have another strategy that is even crueller, which Danforth and co-authors refer to as the “scorched earth attack” in their book The Solitary Bees. The female Sphecodes enters the nest of a social or communal host and kills or repels (probably using pheromones) as many bees as possible. Once the colony has been destroyed, the female blood bee can parasitise the brood cells undisturbed.
Some bees can forage on a wide taxonomic variety of flowering plants. Others need a more restricted set of species, sometimes a very narrow one. Bee species that rely on flowers from one plant family, or a subset of it, are called oligolectic. Those that choose only one plant species (or, according to some authors, one plant genus) are called monolectic. On the cartoon you can see a female silvery pantaloon bee Dasypoda argentata, a narrow specialist on cream scabious Scabiosa ochroleuca.
Anthophora bimaculata is one of the species with an exceptionally high-pitched tone produced during flight. I know only one other bee with that character – Bombus sylvarum, a bumblebee that has earned the common name “shrill carder bee”. Do you know other examples of bees buzzing like a mosquito?
Have you ever wondered what bees think about the unauthorised posting of their image online?
Whereas the majority of bees nest in the ground, there is also quite a large group of cavity-nesting species. These species nest in various holes, inside plant stems, in cavities in wood (sometimes they gnaw them by themselves). In cities, they can use man-made holes of various kinds (sometimes being very creative in their choices). If they happen to nest in a movable object (eg. a tree trunk ready for transport, or garden furniture) they can be accidentally transported with their nests… sometimes far away. It happened to a number of bee species which became invasive in their “new homes”, eg. the European wool carder bee (Anthidium manicatum) moved to the United States, or Megachile sculpturalis, native to Asia, which is now spreading across Europe.
…and the most cat-like bumblebee is the brown-banded carder bee! It just struck me how similar they are. Bombus humilis is called “trzmiel zmienny” in Polish, which means “the variable bumblebee”. It’s really accurate name. This species can come in various colour forms, some of them so dissimilar that you could think they are different species. My favourite form is the one I nicknamed ‘calico’ on the cartoon below.
PS I set up an account on BuyCoffee. If you want to support my work and help me buy more books about bees, I’ll be very thankful. And, as always, I’m thankful for all your shares and likes on social media, and positive comments and messages!
I just read an interesting study about the impact of apiaries on bumblebee colonies. It is one of quite a few studies exploring this topic. Honeybees, especially in high densities, can compete for food with wild bees. They can also transmit diseases and parasites to wild bee species. So, setting up an apiary is a potential threat for wild bees already living in the area. Despite that, beekeeping is often considered by the public to be a form of bee protection. It is a problem in bee conservation and we, bee-lovers, need to clarify this issue.
Returning to the study I mentioned. The researchers set up experimental bumblebee colonies in various distances from the apiary, and checked how this distance affects colony reproduction (production of workers and new queens), immunity of the individual bumblebees and risk of infestation of the colony by the bumblebee wax moth, Aphomia sociella. The bumblebee wax moth is native to Europe (where the research was conducted) and in natural conditions can invade bumblebee nests, feeding on wax, pollen or… bumblebee larvae. Nothing pleasant for the colony. It also can live in weak honeybee colonies.
What about the results? The nearer to the apiary, the more probable was infestation of the bumblebee nest by their wax moth. Worse still, the proximity of the apiary negatively affected immunity of bumblebees and their reproduction. The latter effects are explained by the authors by weakening of the colonies because of competition for food. All these effect can interact and strengthen each other – worse immunocompetence of bumblebees means higher risk of infestation with diseases, which is already increased by honeybees’ proximity.
What can we do with this knowledge? Surely not set up new apiaries “to help the bees”. Instead, we can provide food for all bees (honey- and non-honey-) in the form of flowering plants, preferably belonging to diverse native species. We can also protect habitats of wild bees, where they find food and nesting sites. We also can reduce pesticide use. And if we already have honeybees, let’s care for them as best we can, because healthy honeybees mean less risk of transmiting diseases to wild bee species.
How common is the knowledge that setting up apiaries doesn’t help bees, in your country? Is honeybee a native species where you live? Let me know 🙂
My activity on this page is inversely proportional to the activity of bees in the field in Poland… Now it’s time for mating balls. Fascinating clumps of male solitary bees, with a female (so I assume) somewhere inside. Males are crazy, chasing potential mates (and sometimes also everything remotely resembling a mate, for example other species of bees). When they are present in large numbers, like in nesting aggregations, they can scare people but they’re absolutely harmless.
Solitary bee (and, basically, all bee) males don’t have a stinger, and females do, but use it only to defend themselves when they have no other options. They don’t attack when you come near their nest, like honeybees do. Did you already know that? Tell it to your friends and family who might not know!
I must say it right away: bats don’t get tangled in peoples’ hair. It’s a myth, and they are harmless, nice animals in general. But I just came across such a sentence in a book “Bees of Costa Rica” by P. Hanson et al.:
“(…)some species of Partamona and Trigona are highly aggressive toward stimuli close to their colony and will attack humans by entangling themselves in hair and biting”.
Both abovementioned genera belong to Meliponini, the stingless bees which, as the name suggests, don’t possess functional stinger. However, they are not defenseless! Apart from biting, some species can also secrete irritating substances to make their attack even fiercer. Of course, I doubt you should be afraid of them in general. Just don’t mess with the nest, and everything should be fine!
Non-honey bees 