Bees Are Not (Purposeful) Pollinators

Today is World Bee Day, for celebrating our favorite pollinators. I enthusiastically support increasing awareness of bees other than honey bees, but a vague mythology exists. Here is some food for thought, remembering that one out of every three bites of food we eat we owe to the efforts of pollinators.

A tiny sweat bee, genus Lasioglossum, visits a ornamental Amaryllis flower in our Leavenworth, Kansas yard. Bees prefer native plants, though.

There is something of a persistent fairy tale, if only implied, that portrays bees as little agents of plant reproduction, flying flower to flower to effect floral fertilization, like it is their job, or out of the goodness of their tiny little hearts. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

A female mining bee, genus Andrena, pauses to rest and groom between forays for collecting pollen. Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Bees are best described as “pollen harvesters,” or even, perish the thought, “pollen predators.” Female bees actively collect pollen as food provisions for their larval offspring. This definition applies to honey bees, bumble bees, sweat bees, mining bees, mason bees, leafcutter bees, digger bees, all the bees except the kleptoparastic cuckoo bees. Cuckoo bees don’t collect pollen, but lay their eggs in the nests of other bees that do. Cuckoo bee larvae feed on the stolen pollen reserves of their hosts.

Many cuckoo bees, like this one in the genus Nomada, look more like wasps, lacking the "fuzzy" appearance we associate with bees. Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Pollination occurs as a by-product of the bee’s determined, thorough gathering of pollen; and the body form of bees that allows pollen to be shed as frequently as it is foraged. Body plan and behavior therefore make bees effective pollinators.

A male Squash Bee, Peponapis pruinosa, waits in a flower for a potential mate to visit. Thes bee species visits flowers in the gourd family exclusively. Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Another facet of bee behavior is that some species are oligolectic, meaning they visit only one particular genus, or even species, of flower. This greatly increases the likelihood that pollination will happen. Many bees are generalists, and will visit a variety of flowers, lowering the possibility of compatibility of bee-shed pollen with the flower receiving the bee’s next visit. This is not usually appreciable enough to be negatively significant, but it is still worth noting.

A female sweat bee, genus Halictus, has difficulty reaching pollen and nectar in an ornamental rose flower. Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Flowers and bees have coevolved to take advantage of each other, and it is an ongoing, dynamic relationship. Human interference threatens to upend that in a variety of ways. Some plant cultivars have sterile flowers, and bees therefore waste time and energy trying to “get blood out of a turnip.” Other cultivars, bred for large, complex “double bloom” flowers, result in blossoms too complicated for bees to navigate to find pollen and nectar. Lastly, cultivars may have pollen with a much lower nutritional value than that of the native plant they were derived from.

A worker female honey bee, Apis mellifera, among the first bees active in spring. El Paso County, Colorado.

Honey bees, social bees in the genus Apis that are not native to the Americas or Australia, are the unfortunate poster children for Bee Day, thanks to public familiarity through heavy marketing campaigns by the apiculture (bee keeping) industry. While absolutely vital pollinators for industrial scale agriculture, honey bees in unmanaged, feral colonies have a serious negative impact in natural ecosystems. Honey bees hog floral resources that native bee species, most of which are solitary, need to prosper.

A female Eastern Carpenter Bee, Xylocopa virginica, robs nectar from a hosta flower, throuch a slit she cut at the base of the blossom. Leavenworth, Kansas.

Back to flowers and bees for a moment. There are long- and short-tongued bees. This difference in anatomy means that many bees are restricted to visiting flowers with shallow corollas, such that they can reach the nectar reservoirs. Some larger short-tongued bees, namely large carpenter bees in the genus Xylocopa, are able to cut a slit at the bottom of deep-throated flowers, and “rob” the nectar without dusting themselves with pollen in the process of feeding. Smaller bees follow the carpenter bee, and take advantage of the holes it cuts.

The bumble bee on the left performs proper pollination of a hosta flower, while the longhorned digger bee on the right bypasses the flower's reproductive parts and uses a slit cut by a carpenter bee to rob nectar.

If it seems like the myth of the hard-working bee might be falling apart a little, then what about other pollinators like butterflies, moths, wasps, flies, beetles, hummingbirds, and bats? Well, those organisms are not even coming to flowers for pollen, with a few exceptions. They are “flower visitors” that want nectar as sugary fuel for their high metabolism. Setae (hairs), feathers, and fur will accumulate pollen, and shed it, so again, pollination can be achieved, but it is not some kind of selfless mission of the critter.

A female leafcutter bee, genus Megachile, shears a piece from a redbud leaf to use in fashioning a cell in her nest. She can do quite a bit of cosmetic damage, but the shrub will be fine. Leavenworth, Kansas.

All of this is not to say that bees are not loveable, and in need of conservation. Here are some neat facts, tips for helping bees, and resources to investigate:

• There are over 4,000 species of bees found north of Mexico. Hotspots include the Mojave Desert, and Colorado.
• Most native, solitary bees nest in burrows underground, so leave some bare patches of soil in your yard for them.
• ”Bee hotels,” aka bee condos, bee blocks, are for solitary bees that nest in natural cavities in wood. Avoid commercial products, and make your own; or, better yet, leave stumps and solid wood logs in the yard that have obvious holes from beetle borings. Snip old, hollow twigs and woody stems so bees can use those upright tunnels, too.
• Consult online gurus like Dr. Kit Prendergast (“The Bee Babette”) of Australia, and Krystle Hickman (“beesip”) of southern California, for friendly presentations on bees, and tips on how to help them.
• Watch My Garden of a Thousand Bees, a fascinating documentary set in the United Kingdom, but applicable elsewhere in the northern hemisphere.
• Landscape with native plants whenever and wherever you can. Be tolerant of the damage done by female leafcutter bees making their nests by cutting chunks of foliage.

A female sweat bee, genus Lasioglossum, lives up to her name and sips perspiration from my hand. Leavenworth, Kansas.

Enjoy the rest of National Bee Day, and get ready of National Pollinator Week, coming June 22-28, 2026.

City Nature Challenge 2026 Recap: Insects

My anticipation for the annual City Nature Challenge usually begins with great anxiety around the weather, and ends with nice surprises and unexpected species. This year was no different. I have the luxury of time, and knowledge, to make the most of the event regardless.

A male fire-colored beetle, Neopyrochroa femoralis, at our backyard blacklight, Leavenworth, Kansas.

A week prior, the forecast was looking like a nearly complete washout, with high chances of rain, if not storms. It turned out that the few inclement periods happened mostly in the overnight hours. It was still windy, or at least gusty, most of the time, with some hide-and-seek sun, too.

Eastern Tailed-blue butterfly in Havens Park, Leavenworth, Kansas.

More angst surrounded the changes we experienced at some of the parks we frequent. Our local “wild” park, Havens Park in Leavenworth, Kansas, USA, is installing a frisbee golf course, and has cleared patches of forest in the process. Meanwhile, in Wyandotte County Lake Park to the southwest, we noticed substantially clearing of vegetation around one of our favorite sites, a backwater pond. If they were going after invasive honeysuckle, great, but it appeared that it was that particular plant that was rebounding after the cutting and scraping.

The male Orange Spur Fly, Teuchocnemis bacuntius, waving hello. Havens Park, Leavenworth, Kansas.

Despite the setbacks, I managed to find some interesting insects. Chief among them was a unique syrphid fly, the Orange Spur Fly, Teuchocnemis bacuntius, that I spied at the edge of the forest near the front of Havens Park. This is a fairly large fly, named for the spur on the hind tibia of the male. Little is known about its life history, and mine is the only Kansas record for both iNaturalist and Bugguide, online.

A male Goatweed Leafwing, defending territory in Havens Park, Leavenworth, Kansas.

A male Harvester on the lookout for passing females. Havens Park, Leavenworth, Kansas.

We have had a warm, early spring, and many species had come and gone by the time the City Nature Challenge began. It was difficult to find some butterflies, for example, that peaked earlier in April. I still managed to spot two that I was hoping for: The Goatweed Leafwing, and the Harvester.

Hayhurst's Scallopwing skipper, Havens Park, Leavenworth, Kansas.

Duskywing skippers were so faded and tattered that identification was nearly impossible, but I was delighted to see a perfect specimen of a Hayhurst’s Scallopwing.

A male Common Baskettail dragonfly, Havens Park, Leavenworth, Kansas.

A male Springtime Darner dragonfly, Wyandotte County Lake Park, Kansas.

A male Blue Corporal dragonfly, Wyandotte County Lake Park, Kansas.

Other charismatic “bugs” included dragonflies, and I was fortunate to see a few of them perch. Common Baskettail is typical for this time period, as is the Springtime Darner, and Blue Corporal. Variegated Meadowhawk can be seen almost year round.

Six-spotted Tiger Beetle on a trail in Wyandotte County Lake Park, Kansas.

Beetles were out both day and night. Six-spotted Tiger Beetle is always a delight, and hard to miss with its bright green color. We even found a pair of mating Spring Treetop Flasher fireflies, over at Weston Bend State Park in Missouri.

Spring Treetop Flasher fireflies at Weston Bend State Park, Missouri.

Also at Weston Bend, I noticed what I thought at first was a bumble bee or carpenter bee, but it was flying a little slower, and silently. It was an American Carrion Beetle! I managed to knock it down, and brought it home for a photo shoot, before releasing it in our yard (I had one in our yard a couple years ago).

Studio portrait of American Carrion Beetle from Weston Bend State Park, Missouri.

Among the new species we recorded for our home property was a checkered beetle on the side of our house: Madoniella dislocata. It preys on small wood-boring beetles, so maybe it flew over from the logs and brush pile in the back yard.

Checkered beetle, Madoniella dislocata, at our Leavenworth, Kansas home.

I did blacklighting twice. The first night in the front yard, where we have a big old Pin Oak tree, was probably too cold and clear, and barely anything flew in.

This Isabella Tiger Moth, adult of the familiar "woollybear" caterpillar, was one of the few insects to come to our front yard blacklight on April 24, in Leavenworth, Kansas.

The next night, in the back yard, was the much more successful, the weather being warmer.

Faint-spotted Palthis moth, Palthis asopialis, at the backyard blacklight, Leavenworth, Kansas.

A Two-spotted Diaperis beetle, Diaperis maculata, at the backyard blacklight, Leavenworth, Kansas.

The nocturnal insect crowd included many kinds of beetles, flies, true bugs, moths, and wasps. The diversity was greater than the quantity of any one taxon. That will change soon, as caddisflies and rove beetles assert their dominance later, often overwhelming the sheet.

A stink bug, genus Banasa, at the backyard blacklight, Leavenworth, Kansas.

The largest moth visitor we had at the backyard blacklight was this American Dagger, Acronicta americana.

Bees were not as abundant as I was expecting, but several species had mostly come and gone already, especially cellophane bees (aka “polyester bees,” genus Colletes). The early mason bees, genus Osmia, were mostly finished, too.

A mason bee, genus Osmia, investigates some damp soil as potential material for her nest. Havens Park, Leavenworth, Kansas.

Kleptoparasitic bees, namely Nomada and Sphecodes, were still evident. They make their living in the larval stage feeding in the nests of other solitary bees.

A "blood bee," genus Sphecodes, from Havens Park, Leavenworth, Kansas.

Wasp diversity was quite high, too. I saw a couple of mating pairs of mason wasps, and there were at least four genera that I observed.

Mating mason wasps, Euodynerus foraminatus, male on top, in Havens Park, Leavenworth, Kansas.

One of the most interesting wasps found me. I noticed it on the sleeve of my shirt, took a picture, and then captured it for a controlled photoshoot at home. I thought it was a large eupelmid (family Eupelmidae), but in seeking further help with identification via a Facebook group, I learned it was something else entirely.

The Cleonymus magnificus wasp, maybe five millimeters, from Sportsfield Park in Leavenworth, Kansas.

Meet Cleonymus magnificus. Until recently, it was placed in the family Pteromalidae. It is now in its own family, the Cleonymidae. I will eventually write a blog post about this insect specifically, so stay tuned.

Please see my other blog, Sense of Misplaced, for a companion post that treats the birds, mammals, and other non-insect wildlife that I was fortunate enough to see during the City Nature Challenge. I promise there are some cuties in there.

A small but attractive longhorned beetle, genus Callidium, that I captured in Havens Park, Leavenworth, Kansas.

All of my observations for the 2026 City Nature Challenge can be found at this iNaturalist link. Feel free to share a link to your own observations in the comments. I would love to see what you discovered!

Thank You, Donors!

A wonderful thing happened recently. A friend gave me a camera that they haven’t been using, after I posted on social media that my current camera, which I have had for at least four years, is becoming glitchy, and I don’t know how much longer it will perform adequately. I did not expect a response to be so tangible, but it reminded me of how indebted I am to donors for the continued existence and success of this blog.

A new camera thanks to Lloyd D! Recurring $$ from Rich S!

After much deliberation, I have decided that at my advancing age, and because I have a deep and useful archive of posts here on Blogger, that I will not be changing platforms.

Another friend from LinkedIn flat out told me that “nobody makes money from blogs anymore.” Writers in general have an exceptionally difficult time making money anywhere, but we have to try. I would like to think that our time, knowledge, and unique experiences and perspectives are still in demand, and worthy of a little compensation.

This brings me to something else terrific. Yet another friend, whom I know personally, sent me a small monetary donation through PayPal. The next month, it happened again. It turns out it is a recurring donation. I had no idea that PayPal even offered that option.

What I would like to do is start a conversation in the comments for this post, about what kinds of rewards I could offer to followers who contribute regular donations. I also need to know what payment systems people prefer, so that I can investigate them and create accounts accordingly. My partner has Venmo, so she could probably help me set that up….

Rewards that come immediately to mind include a free, signed copy of one of my books after, say, three or four months of a repeating ten-dollar donation. I could agree to a virtual conversation over Zoom for an hour or so. Donors could earn the right to a guest post here, or I could write a profile about their own work and how it can be supported. Aside from my books, I do not have any “merch” at present, but I am willing to entertain suggestions. My partner does do stickers of insects and birds, though.

Please remember that I also have the blog Sense of Misplaced, where I write about things other than insects and arachnids. Sometimes it is about other types of wildlife, sometimes matters of social concern, (archival) poetry, “politics,” philosophical commentary, or other subjects and styles.

Between the two blogs, I am hoping to earn enough to at least cover the increasing expense of health insurance. Contrary to popular assumption, U.S. Medicare is not free healthcare. Mine is a little over $200 per month, whereas I was paying only a fraction of that prior to turning sixty-five. I have elected not to enroll in a “medigap” plan that covers a few things Medicare does not. That would double my monthly healthcare expense. I am delaying the receipt of Social Security payments for at least another year.

The bottom line is that I would like to remain reasonably stable financially, and resume my own donations to organizations and causes that are important to me, such as Doctors Without Borders, The Trevor Project, Southern Poverty Law Center, and Missouri Prairie Foundation. I also have my own recurring donation to the Patreon account for the Ologies podcast with Alie Ward.

As followers and donors, you have every right to assert accountability when it comes to frequency and content of posts here. I want to serve you better, and more often, for as long as I am able. Thank you for your continued support. Please see the “Donors” tab at the top of the page, to see the friends you could be joining.

The Beetle and the Bee

At the end of February, I finally found a beetle I had been looking for here, for years. Perhaps I had not been scouting for it early enough, but we barely had a winter this year, and I suspect that most years it would have been evident in March. The key was finding an aggregation of its host organism.

Tricrania sanguinipennis is a blister beetle in the family Meloidae. The adult insects measure 9-15 millimeters, but are bright enough, and active enough, that they are easily seen. Their wings, hidden under their red, leathery elytra, are almost vestigial, so they are flightless. Instead they crawl, but rather rapidly, over the surface of the soil, periodically digging where they detect the possible presence of a host.

Kansas is about as far west as this beetle is found, though there are records well north into Saskatchewan, Canada. It occurs over the eastern U.S. to extreme northern Florida, and up into adjacent southern Canada.

The limiting factor is that Tricrania sanguinipennis is a parasitoid of solitary bees that nest in dense aggregations, namely cellophane bees in the genus Colletes.

We have the Unequal Cellophane Bee, Colletes inaequalis, nesting in our yard and/or the adjacent neighbor’s lawn, depending on the year, but those locations are apparently blister beetle-free. It took finding a small aggregation of the bees in a forested park to locate the beetles.

An Unequal Cellophane Bee lurks just inside the entrance to her burrow.

The bees nest in burrows, ideally in sandy soil. The vertical, subterranean tunnels branch into several individual cells, each one an “apartment” for a single bee larva. The grub feeds on a nearly liquid loaf of pollen and nectar. The walls of its room are coated in a type of natural plastic manufactured in glands in its mother’s abdomen, which essentially waterproofs the chamber, and retards mold and fungus.

Back to the beetles. What the female beetles lack in mobility, they more than make up for in fecundity. Each lady can produce hundreds of eggs, over a thousand in some documented instances. How, then, do the beetles gain entry into these tunnels? The answer is that they do not. The larvae do.

The larval stage is unusually lengthy, progressing through six instars. An instar is the interval between molts. It is also strange in that it includes hypermetamorphosis. In this case that means the larval form changes radically in both appearance and behavior from one molt to the next.

Several male Unequal Cellophane Bees waiting for females to emerge.

The first instar larva that emerges from the egg is a sleek, streamlined, highly mobile bee-seeking missile called a triungulin. At the time they are active, it is almost exclusively male Colletes bees that are active, buzzing about and frequently landing to investigate a potential site where a female could emerge. It is at these brief moments when a blister beetle triungulin scampers aboard, affixing itself to the hairs on the underside of the bee’s abdomen.

Oops! An overeager male mistakes another male for a female.

When the male bee at last is able to mate, the triungulin transfers to the female bee. In at least a few instances, the triungulin may attach directly to a female bee that it encounters on the ground. She will eventually, and unwittingly, ferry that parasite, and probably several others, to her new nest burrow. Once inside, it disembarks and infiltrates one of the subterranean nest cells.

The beetle larva usually consumes the egg of the host immediately, but not always. The bulk of its diet will be the honey and pollen left by the bee for its offspring in the cell. It may be a frequent occurrence that more than one beetle larva invades a single bee cell. In that event, cannibalism of the competition resolves the conflict.

The meal of the host egg or larva is usually enough nutrition to trigger the beetle larva’s molt to the next instar. This results in a shocking change from that sleek, active larva into the insect equivalent of a couch potato. The second instar is, shall we say….rotund, and boat-shaped. It commences feeding on the pollen and nectar stores in the cell of the now missing bee offspring. The insect retains this form for the remainder of its larval life. The first three instars shuck their old exoskeleton completely, but the fourth and fifth instars retain each molt in its entirety. Think of it as an object inside a balloon (inside another balloon by the fifth instar). Those larvae actually shrink in size to fit inside the shed “skins.” When molting into the pupa stage, the sixth molt is again broken during shedding, and compacted at the rear of the pupa, which is still inside those other exoskeleton balloons.

It takes until late summer or early fall for the life cycle to complete, the adult beetle remaining encased in its final one or two larval exuviae, where it overwinters, still inside the cell in the host’s nest burrow.

You would think that the bee species hosting this diabolical beetle would be decimated by it, but such is not the case. Each spring there are plenty of the adult bees. What is more of a threat is the potential disconnect between the bees and their nectar plants. Colletes inaequalis visits flowering trees almost exclusively, especially Eastern Redbud, and maple trees. As the phenology of the blooming cycles becomes increasingly unpredictable thanks to climate change, the appearance of the flowers may cease to always coincide with the emergence of the bees that pollinate them.

Sources: Messinger Carril, Olivia, and Joseph S. Wilson. 2021. Common Bees of Eastern North America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 286 pp.
Parker, J.B. and Adam G. Boving. 1925. “The Blister Beetle Tricrania sanguinipennis - Biology, Descriptions of Different Stages, and Systematic Relationship,” Proc U.S. Nat. Mus. 64(2491): 1-40. This is a wonderfully exhaustive article, with illustrations of all larval instars.