Familiar Bees

Of the many thousands of species of bees in the world, dozens make their home at Halibut Point. The ones you're likely to come across belong to the family Apidae which are defined by their common trait of possessing long tongues useful in sipping flower nectar. Otherwise Apidae members often look quite different from each other. Some of them are 'social' in the sense that they organize themselves for cooperative living advantages by developing role specializations. As a generality it can be said that the Apidae family is unique among insects in its degree of achieving this evolutionary advance.

There are four other families of bees significantly represented at Halibut Point. You'll be forgiven for not examining their finer anatomical distinctions in the field.

Here is a way of looking at the local taxonomic groups of Apidae.

THE WESTERN HONEYBEE

Apis mellifera

Honeybees came originally from Europe as an important domestic food source. Many have formed their own colonies in the wild. Because of their ability to make and store large quantities of calorie-rich honey they are the only species capable of over-wintering in our climate as a community. Apis mellifera is the only species of honeybee in our area.

THE BUMBLEBEE GENUS

Bumblebees are endearingly recognized for their plump colorful patterns, fuzzy coats, and slow meanderings among wildflowers. Their communities are much more primitively organized than honeybees and capable of storing only a day or two supply of honey in their underground nests. Only well-provisioned queens survive the winter. These queens have been previously fertilized to renew the colony by bearing a new generation in the spring.

Bombus impatiens
Common Eastern Bumble Bee

Bombus perplexus
Perplexing Bumble Bee

Bombus terricola
Yellowbanded Bumble Bee

CUCKOO BEES

Within the Apidae one lineage Nomadinae has evolved the kleptoparasitic behavior of laying their eggs in the nests of other bees, reminiscent of cuckoo birds. Similar predatory species have developed independently within many other social families of bees‒a case of convergent evolution.

Nomadinae have a different physical appearance from other Apidae because they do not need pollen-collecting structures on their legs nor the associated body hairs. They have relatively thick and/or heavily sculptured exoskeletons  and saber-like mandibles. A female typically lays her eggs in cells provisioned by the host bee with food intended for offspring. When the cuckoo larva hatches it consumes this pollen ball, and, if the female kleptoparasite has not already done so, kills and eats the host larva.

Nomada maculata
Spotted Nomad

Nomada ruficornis
Typical Nomad Bees

CARPENTER BEES

Two genera are common in our area, Xylocopa (large Carpenter Bees) and Ceratina (Small Carpenter Bees.)

Xylocopa virginica
Eastern Carpenter Bee

Large Carpenter Bees look a great deal like Bumblebees except that their abdomens are hairless and shiny black. They have the unnerving habit of boring into wooden houses structures for nesting sites and hovering (harmlessly) around anyone who approaches. While gregarious they are not highly social in the sense of maintaining complex divisions of labor within a colony. They tunnel into dead wood by vibrating their bodies as they rasp their mandibles against it, discarding the bits of wood as yellowish sawdust or reusing particles to build partitions between brood cells.

Ceratina sp.
Small Carpenter Bees

Small Carpenter Bees are prolific pollinators among the wildflowers of Halibut Point, though not so commonly noticed because of their quarter-inch status. Their nesting is often solitary within the pith or stem of a shrub, as for the individual pictured above. Each egg is sealed within a cell provisioned with a pollen ball for the larva's consumption after hatching. 

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All these species of bees play important roles in the life cycle of plants at Halibut Point. Neither they nor the flora they pollinate would exist without the other. Native bees were doing this long before the honeybee arrived in Colonial times.