Native Bees

The most recognized of bee species surrounding us are the 'social' ones that live colonially: honeybees that originated in Europe, and our native bumblebees. The many other native species tend to be solitary, smaller, less conspicuous but numerous, and very important pollinators of all types of plants.

'Solitary' means that, unlike 'social' bees, they nest individually (if sometimes gregariously) and carry out their life functions without specialization of labor. Egg production in social bees is accomplished only by queens, the other females being sterile workers comprising the vast majority of the population. In solitary bees all the females are fertile, with ingenious techniques for nesting and propagation.

Bees exist on a spectrum of sociality, with honeybees by far the most developed in cooperative traits that allow them to store overwintering food supplies within protective architecture. Some eusocial species of native bees have developed partial or primitive capabilities in cooperative life. All these various types may be regarded as successful in their niches, not necessarily superior to one another.

Bees can of course identify and congregate around the characteristics of their own species. For human scientists interested in taxonomy the distinguishing features among some bee species can be difficult to discern without laboratory aids, which generally prove fatal to the collected specimen. Even good photographs are inadequate for determining identification down to the species level within some genera.

As a simple observer I've had to be content with not knowing exactly how many species of bees I've encountered at Halibut Point. With online help from the BugGuide experts I've been able to put names to representatives of about 30 categories. No doubt the number of local species is considerably greater, if specimens were brought to anatomical scrutiny under a microscope. Here is a sampling of creatures from each bee family in the wild.

APIDAE family - Cuckoo, Carpenter, Digger, Bumble, and Honey Bees

Ceratina sp. - Small Carpenter Bee 

This pith-chewing inhabitant of woody stems is a tiny relative of the Large Carpenter Bees that tunnel into your house's fascia boards and hover menacingly (but harmlessly) around their (your) domicile.

Nomada maculata  - Spotted Nomad

Nomad bees are wasp-like in appearance, which no doubt gives them a protective advantage. They are also called cuckoo bees because like cuckoo birds they enter the nest of a host and lay eggs there.  Upon hatching its larva steal resources that the host bee had intended for its own.

MEGACHILIDAE family - Leafcutter, Mason, and Resin Bees, and allies

Megachile inermis, Unarmed Leafcutter Bee

Leafcutter bees line each cell of their underground nests with precisely cut leaf fragments, maneuvered in place in the tight darkness and stuck together into a tiny package containing one egg and all the food the larva will need to grow into an adult.

ADRENIDAE family - Miner, Fairy, Allied Panurgine, and Oxaeine Bees

Andrena wilkella, Miner Bee

Miner bees dig burrows for nesting. They provision these with pollen collected on femoral scopal hairs, as is typical of most genera of bees, but are additionally capable of carrying it on their thorax.

COLLETIDAE family - Plasterer Bees & Yellow-faced Bees

Hylaeus modestus modestus - Eastern Modest Masked Bee

Yellow-faced bees are unusual in that they carry pollen mixed with nectar internally within their crop. The female spits up this liquefied nutrient into a nest cell she has carefully coated with silk embedded in polyester. When she has gathered enough food she lays an egg right in the provisions. She then closes up that cell and begins the next.

HALICTIDAE family - Sweat, Furrow, Nomiine, and Shortface Bees

Augochlora pura, Pure Green-Sweat Bee

Halictid species form an extremely diverse group that can vary greatly in appearance, with various colors and patterns, often metallic.

Sphecodes sp. - Blood Bee

Sphecodes comprise a genus of cuckoo bees parasitic on other bees' nests. Note that their legs are hairless. The adults consume nectar, but because they use other bees' provisions to feed their offspring they do not collect pollen.

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Research confirms the power of wild bees....This particular study reviewed the effect of wild pollinators on crop yields in forty-one crop systems all over the world. The authors found that fruit set increased in every one of those systems when they were visited by wild pollinators, but only fourteen percent of the systems showed significant increases in fruit set with honey bee visits....Part of the power of wild bees is their diversity. They fly at different times of the day. Some will fly in bad weather. They forage differently and contact the stigma differently. They carry pollen differently. If only one pollinator, like a honey bee, is available, it makes sense that it would not be as effective as a bunch of different kinds of bees.

Paige Emery, Our Native Bees, 2018.

Bumblebee Economics

 

Common Eastern Bumble Bee, Bombus impatiens

Bumblebees are the other type of 'social' bee at Halibut Point, meaning that they nest colonially with a certain amount of division of labor, though nowhere near the extent of non-native honeybees.

Greg Morrow pointing to a grout pile crevice
where he observed bumblebees nesting last year

Their forays for pollen and nectar enable them to provision the colony for supporting brood increase throughout the warmer months. However they don't stockpile enough honey to get any members but queens through the winter. The fertilized queens go dormant in underground burrows and emerge to found new colonies in the spring. The series of roles, specializations, and identity changes that develop through the season from that single female founder makes for an interesting demographic study and a meditation on the interrelationship of individual and group survival.

Bumblebee wings in motion

Bumblebees are much larger than honeybees. Their ability to fly at all defied our minds' grasp until recent instruments determined that the bee's nearly 200 wingbeats per second are coordinated like helicopter blades in reverse-pitch semi rotary motion to deliver adequate lift and thrust. The neurological, muscular, metabolic, cooling and other intricacies of its flight, as understood by modern science, make fascinating reading.

Bumblebee foraging on a Bull Thistle flower

Bernd Heinrich in his Bumblebee Economics (1979) provides a whodunit spectrum of research adventures on how these creatures go about their busy bee-ness. Undoubtedly the revelations are satisfying to curious minds, to pure science, and to military engineers.

Bumblebee approaching a Yellow Thistle

The only fuel bees can use is sugar, which they derive from flower nectar. It also sustains the activities of the hive. The calories harvested from a foraging trip obviously exceed the calories used in flight. Bumblebees in the air are very efficient internal combustion engines with all the complexities of carburetion, heat transfer, exhaust disposal, load management, and navigational guidance of our manmade conveyance machines. Add to this circulatory, digestive, and other physiological systems, as well as the necessities of defense and propagation.

The intricate web of`interrelations among bees and flower is primarily governed by energy needs and payoffs. Throughout their evolution, bees have attempted to reap the maximum rewards from flowers. Flowers, on the other hand, have evolved to supply the least amount of food necessary to attract pollinators and to keep them moving from one plant to another for cross-pollination. The bumblebee's energy budget is of great significance in the insect's energy game with the flowers. The competition among plants for the pollinators' service, and among the pollinators for the plants' food rewards, decisively shapes the behavior, structure, and physiology of both plants and pollinators. Bernd Heinrich

Perplexing Bumble Bee, Bombus perplexus

Two other species of bumblebees occasionally found at Halibut Point.

Yellowbanded Bumble Bee, Bombus terricola

Tail Waggle Dancers

 

Honeybee hovering over sumac flowers, its pollen baskets brimming

After a successful foraging trip a honeybee wants to tell the other members of its hive about the bonanza's location. It shares this information so that other workers can go there directly to benefit their joint larder. It's entirely an all-for-one, one-for-all communal relationship.

You may wonder what language it uses to communicate, within the darkness of the hive and without apparent vocalizations.

The tail waggle dancer
informing two other workers

When a field worker discovers a notable source of pollen and nectar it reports to fellow workers by maneuvers on a vertical surface of honeycomb. It crawls in a pattern of loops alternately clockwise and counterclockwise. The angle between vertical and the central axis of those loops describes the angle between the sun and the flight path to the premium flowers.

There are very likely intricacies related to the bee's ability to perceive polarized sunlight, which we can't see, that provide it additional navigational guidance in making foraging trips sometimes over several miles from the hive to very specific sources of food.

By the duration of the tail waggle loops the bee is able to relate precisely how far its co-workers will have to fly in the given direction.

Honeybee at honeysuckle blossom

Besides the division of labor within the hive these selfless, coordinated foraging abilities are what distinguishes social bees from the majority of species with solitary lifestyles. Drop by drop they can build large stocks of honey that enable the colony to overwinter collectively rather than simply as eggs surviving to another season after the parents' demise in cold weather.

QuarryArt

I'm pleased to be contributing the Sculpture portion of the QuarryArt program at the Cape Ann Museum this Saturday, July 8, 2:00-3:00. Registration is required.

Being part of the lineup is intriguing because it draws out from other creative people their own responses to these compelling features of our landscape and our history, in their own media and their own words.

My relationship with quarries began with a utilitarian interest in obtaining available stone.

In the slide show I'm going to trace my journey from there to art.

Halibut Point is not a work of art, nor even sculpture, but it's a mecca for everyone's aesthetic refreshment.