Looking Beyond the Honey Bee: The Importance of Our Native Bees
Written by Jeanne Waful. After retiring Jean took a course in Environmental Education and began leading children on walks through Westchester County Parks, including the Marshlands Conservancy and Cranberry Lake. This experience reignited her childhood love of all things outdoors and she embarked on 5-year stint working on a territory for the New York State Breeding Bird Atlas and leading bird walks at Muscoot Farm for 9 years. Watching and learning from the birds led her to the bees, naturally. She began studying insects: lepidoptera, ensifera, bees, and wasps. She plans to continue finding inspiration and enjoying the natural beauty in and around Stamford, Connecticut.
Copyright © Joseph S. Wilson
Which bees:
1. Work in cooler weather?
2. Work longer hours?
3. Carry more pollen?
4. Can buzz pollinate, necessary for some plants?
A. Bumble bees B. Long-horned bees C. Mason bees D. Honey bees E. Green sweat bees
If you guessed anything except Honey bees (Apis Mellifera), you are correct. Before 1622, when European settlers brought honey bees to America, there were 3,657 species of bees already here with their unique place in the ecosystem. We have Carpenter bees (Xylocopa and Ceratina), Sweat bees (Lasioglossum), Green Sweat bees (Agapostemon, Augochlora, and others), Mason bees (Osmia), Mining bees (Andrena), Bumble bees (Bombus), Cuckoo bees (Nomada), Digger bees (Anthophora), Long-horned bees (Melissodes), Leafcutter bees (Megachile), and Cellophane aka Polyester bees (Colletes) to name just some.
One acre of fruit trees requires 1 - 2 honey bee hives with 20,000 or more bees per hive. The Blue Orchard Bee (aka BOB), a type of Mason bee needs only 250 to 750 females to do the same job. They also get busy at 54° so they can work earlier in the day AND earlier in the season. Why females? It was thought until recently that the males did not eat pollen based on studying the Honey bee. A recent study of the species Andrena showed that those males do eat pollen but take only 10% of what females take from flowers. You can tell male bees from female bees by who’s carrying pollen. Males don’t collect pollen.
Honey bees carry on average 1,778 pollen grains on their hairs for cross-pollinating flowers. Long-horned bees have more hairs like many native bees and can carry 104,152 grains. (Imagine the job of counting the pollen grains!) Honey bees are also notorious nectar robbers biting a hole in the flower bypassing pollination altogether!
Members of the Solanaceae and Ericaceae families of plants require vibration to get the pollen out. Bumble bees and Green Sweat bees provide that necessary function for optimal pollination.
Cellophane Bees
At Read Wildlife Sanctuary, you can see Unequal Cellophane Bees (Colletes inaequalis) on the path along the lake in early spring. In 2021, I saw them on April 3rd. Even though they are solitary bees like 90% of our native bees, their nests are in the same “neighborhoods.” They dig underground chambers with brood cells for their eggs that they provision with bee bread, a mix of pollen and nectar that their larvae will eat. They line their nest with a substance they secrete to make it waterproof which is how they get their name. You can see them when they emerge because the males hover over the females’ nests looking to … well, I don’t have to tell you about the birds and bees. One of the websites listed at the end of the article has more information on their life history if you’re interested.
These early cellophane bees also pollinate red maples. Here’s another example of the shifting ground of scientific knowledge: it turns out that red maples are not only wind-pollinated as previously thought. Their early pollen is an important food source for early bees and other early insects and those insects in turn pollinate the flowers.
Honey Bees Vs. Native Bees
Honey bees have earned their keep here: they pollinate 1/3 of the food Americans eat which is mainly grown commercially. They are a great tool for teaching about insects, especially social insects with their communication tactics, group cooperation, and economic architectural skills. The 10 best bee books for children are all about Honey bees. We need to teach about our native bees as well. Some new books about native bees are just starting to enter the marketplace and let’s hope they sell. It was okay to keep Honey bees anywhere in the past. Now we know that they require 5 acres of foraging area to not affect native bees adversely and Read Wildlife Sanctuary meets the bill with 179 acres. But when these beehives are concentrated in more populated areas they have the unintended consequence of crowding out our native bees.
If you want to grow more and bigger tomatoes, squash, eggplant, and blueberries, you'll be better off providing places for our native bees to make their nest. There are manufactured ”hotels" for solitary bees or boxes for Bumble bees. Besides the frayed edges injuring or killing the bees, they pose problems with fungi, mold, mites, parasites, and predators. Wasps are like, “Hey, a new restaurant.” They also need to be cleaned annually at a minimum.
A better idea is to be a little messy. Fallen leaves, old forb stems, dead wood, and rocks provide cover and nesting sites.
The Ouch Factor:
And about being stung: First of all, half of the bees do not sting because they are male and do not have stingers and when females are on flowers, they are not threatened and they will not sting you. But get near the nest of social bees, that is Honey bees or Bumble bees (our only native bee that is social), and it will be defended because the queen is inside and the female defender’s death will help the hive. Calmly walk away—at least try to stay calm.
If you do get stung by a Honey bee, remember that they lose their stinger—and their life. You will need to remove the stinger from your skin (scrape it with a credit card). Bumble bees do not lose their stinger and can sting multiple times but Bumble bees are generally docile and stings are rare. Solitary bees will not defend their nests because that would threaten their very survival and many native bees' stingers cannot even penetrate human skin.
A few sweat bees and other solitary bees may sting if they become trapped in your clothing. [A pesky, picnic-ruining wasp, a yellow jacket, got stuck in my friend's yellow, floral printed shirt but she was able to get it out before it stung her. I googled it and Yellow jackets are attracted to yellow and floral prints.] Bumble bees can be triggered to be aggressive by the color blue, some jewelry, and some scents so if they bother you, you can take a few precautions.
Remember-bees are not the only insect pollinators so it’s good to have a welcoming environment for moths, butterflies, wasps, flies, and beetles. How can we do this?
Plant a variety of native plants to provide flowers from spring to fall!
Don’t use pesticides!
No bug zappers!
Leave the leaves: especially under trees. Insects like moths, butterflies, and bees nest in and under the leaf litter.
The following are newspaper articles, books, and websites with more information. I highly recommend Paige Embry's book, Our Native Bees.
Newspaper articles:
Danovich, Tove, 2023, ‘A Bad Case of the Hives: How honeybees are hurting your backyard’ or ’Backyard bees disfigure yards in ways we are only beginning to comprehend,’ Washington Post, April 13, 2023.
Chiu, Allyson, 2023, ‘The Unexpected Downside of Raising Bees in your Backyard’ or ‘ Urban beekeeping has boomed. Is it bad for the other bees?,’ Washington Post, May 19, 2023.
Segal, David, 2023, ‘The Beekeepers Who Don’t Want You to Buy More Bees,’ New York Times, August 19, 2023.
Websites:
The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation: www.xerces.org
Bumble bees of the Eastern United States BumbleBeeGuideEast2011.pdf
ID Guide to Wild Bees - New York https://www.sharpeatmanguides.com/bumble-bees
The Sunflower Project - (lots of teaching materials for kids): greatsunflower.org
Books:
Buchman, Stephen, What a Bee Knows: Exploring the Thoughts, Memories, and Personalities of Bees, Washington, DC: Island Press, 2023.
Carril Olivia Messinger and Wilson, Joseph S., Common Bees of Eastern North America, Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 2021.
Embry, Paige, Our Native Bees: North America’s Endangered Pollinators and the Fight to Save Them, Portland, OR: Timber Press, 2018.
Holm, Heather, Bees: An Identification and Native Plant Forage Guide, Minnetonka, MN: Pollination Press LLC, 2017.
Holm, Heather, Common Native Bees of the Eastern United States, Cambridge, MN: Adventure Publications, 2022.
Johnson, Lorraine and Colla, Sheila, A Northern Gardener’s Guide to Native Plants and Pollinators: Creating Habitat in the Northeast, Great Lakes, and Upper Midwest, Washington, DC: Island Press, 2023.
Lee-Mader, Eric, Attracting native pollinators : protecting North America's bees and butterflies : the Xerces Society guide, North Adams, MA : Storey Pub., 2011.
Wilson, Joseph S. & Carril, Olivia Messinger, A Guide to North America’s Bees: The Bees in Your Backyard, Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 2016.