Beehives and Detergent Pods

What do the vandalism of beehives and eating laundry detergent pods have in common, besides being dangerous to the perpetrator? They both have gotten undo attention thanks to traditional and social media. Destructive and dangerous behaviors like these tend to make the news precisely because they are unique. The problem is that they become more commonplace the more they are publicized.

Honey bee hives

I was under the impression that beehive vandalism is running rampant lately when in fact there have been only two (2) reported crimes, one in Sioux City, Iowa and the other in Prunedale, California. The number of individual honey bees killed is staggering, no question, but so far these appear to be isolated episodes. That is what the media will do. It will inflate or undermine the reality of what is going on. I wonder now exactly how many teenagers have been eating those laundry detergent pods. Maybe that has been overstated, too.

One other danger of social media and standard media hype is that it can add fuel to the fire. What was a single display of stupidity or vandalism can then result in copycat behavior by others, escalating the damage. I posited the question of what is behind the beehive vandalism to an entomology group on Facebook. One of the prevailing theories was that the Prunedale massacre could easily have been a copycat crime due to the widespread publicity of the Sioux City news story. Insurance fraud was mentioned as a potential motive, along with competing beekeeping businesses, but we may never know. While at least one video out there claims that beekeeping practices are "cruel" and honey bees are basically slaves to humans now, I doubt People for the Ethical Treatment of animals (PETA) or any other animal rights group would harm the bees themselves.

Another interesting point brought up by the entomology group was that we seldom hear about crime in rural areas, which makes a story like the destruction of the beehives all the more attractive to the media. Social media makes almost all geographical locations accessible to traditional channels of news and information, so the two tend to feed each other. Rural crimes, I am told, can be a matter of disgruntled neighbors, vindictive ex-spouses, bored teenagers, or any number of other stimuli.

While I by no means condone beehive vandalism, I lament that the media fails consistently in giving the entire story of apiculture. Honey bees are not native to the New World (North, Central, and South America), but have been introduced here. In the U.S., the first colonies of honey bees were brought by settlers to Jamestown in 1622. They needed the bees to pollinate the crops they imported, not knowing whether native North American bees could, or would, do the job. Furthermore, beeswax was an essential product back then. Honey was perhaps the least of it.

Since then, apiculture has become an industry, one that markets itself vigorously and creatively. It has become a giant enterprise because agriculture has scaled to the point where there is no other way to effect pollination. Indigenous plants and landscapes have been marginalized at best, removing native bees from the picture. The scale of agribusiness is what has taken us to the point where, and I exaggerate to make a point, one non-native species is all that stands between us and starvation.

That was my thought when I learned of the attacks on the hives. Should someone or some organization want to crash a lot of crops, decimating honey bees would be a good start. Fortunately, even with a great deal of ambition and manpower, that scenario is next to impossible to achieve.

More of these for NATIVE bees!

So, a twelve- and thirteen-year old have been arrested in connection with the destroyed hives in Sioux City. Besides fines, a criminal record, and potential incarceration, I wonder if they might be sentenced to community service in....apiculture. Indeed, maybe those kids we label as idiots for ingesting laundry detergent pods could start a youth beekeeping trend instead. Better yet, get them to work making "bee condos" for native, solitary bees that can be hung up around community gardens and local, small-scale farms. Get that activity on Youtube channels. Time for constructive, not destructive, initiatives my young friends.

Polyester Bees

Note: I encourage you, my followers, to collaborate with me in telling stories of the insect and arachnid world. If you have images or videos that illustrate arthropods you would like to know more about, please contact me and I will happily create a post around your visuals. BugEric247ATgmailDOTcom. Thank you.

Colletes female in burrow © MaLisa Spring

Spring is progressing in fits and starts here on the Front Range in Colorado, but elsewhere flowers are blooming and bees are buzzing. Thanks to Jenny Roberts of Massachusetts, Rhonda Matteson of Indiana, and MaLisa Spring of Ohio sharing their images, I am able to write about one of my favorite insects, the "polyester bees" in the genus Colletes, family Colletidae.

Burrows of Colletes © Jenny Roberts

Polyester bees are among the very first solitary bees that one sees in spring, and just about the last to be seen in autumn. While some species are bivoltine, having two generations per calendar year, many are univoltine: there is one generation per year, either in spring or fall.

How did these bees get their name, you may ask. Female solitary bees in many families produce oral and/or abdominal secretions that are useful in waterproofing the underground chambers where their larval offspring develop. Colletes females first lay down a layer of saliva over the walls of a cell, then add a coat of "varnish" from the Dufour's gland in their abdomen. The result is a natural polymer that resembles cellophane. It forms a plastic baggie of sorts that keeps the mostly liquid pollen and nectar supply fresh for the single larva that will feed and grow inside the cell.

Dense nesting aggregation of Colletes, plus males © Rhonda Matteson

No matter where you live in North America, there are polyester bees to be found. There are 99 known species on our continent, north of Mexico, with the greatest diversity in the desert southwest, followed by the central plains and southern New England.

Colletes are most conspicuous in their nesting grounds. They tend to prefer sandy soil, but even bare patches in lawns will do. Even though each female excavates her own burrow, hundreds, even thousands, of bees may occupy a small area. This gives the impression that they are social, and sometimes causes a panic attack in homeowners who see them as a potential threat.

Ball of mating Colletes © Rhonda Matteson

The males literally go where the girls are, so they add to the numbers. The guys are also highly aggressive in pursuing females, creating mating balls like the one captured in pixels by Rhonda (and in Mark Berman's video, link in "Sources"). Males have longer antennae than females, and lack the brush of pollen-collecting hairs (scopa) on each hind leg. Males also land frequently on the ground in nesting areas. The females are too busy going about their business to pause for long, if at all.

Male Colletes sp., Colorado

The other likely place you will find these bees is, of course, on flowers. Ironically, on this very day in the year 2000, I collected several specimens that were foraging in the flowers of a redbud tree in Forsyth, Missouri. Many Colletes will take pollen and nectar from a variety of sources ("polylectic"), but an equal number or more are "oligolectic," meaning they are faithful to only a select variety of related flowers (at family- or genus-level of classification).

Face of female Colletes showing forked "tongue" © Discover Life

Identifying polyester bees is not terribly easy. They closely resemble mining bees in the genus Andrena, and larger sweat bees in the genera Halictus and Lasioglossum. The conclusive characters needed for a concrete ID are also pretty subtle. Colletes have a forked "tongue," the mouthparts bifurcated at the end. Unless the tongue is extended and visible, though, how would you know? The wing veins are another tell-tale clue. The forewing has three submarginal cells, located beneath the marginal cell that is immediately below the leading edge of the wing. Beneath the submarginal cells are recurrent veins. In Andrena the second recurrent vein is relatively straight, while in Colletes it is distinctly sinuous, or S-shaped. Polyester bees have a heart-shaped face in a head-on view, while mining bees have a more round face.

Female Colletes from Missouri showing s-shaped second recurrent vein

Conservation of pollinators is critical in this day and age, and more people need to know about our native solitary bees. Large aggregations of Colletes may nest in the same place year after year, so it is imperative that homeowners, park managers, and others understand that the bees need to be left in peace. Significant populations can be wiped out in one fell swoop otherwise.

Female Colletes emerging from burrow © Jenny Roberts

Thanks again to Jenny, Rhonda, and MaLisa for sharing their images. Be sure to check out other online resources to learn more.

Male Colletes on "skunk bush" sumac flower in Colorado

Sources: Wilson, Joseph S. and Olivia Messinger Carril. 2016. The Bees In Your Backyard. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. 288 pp.
Berman, Mark. 2013. "Mining bees, (Colletes)" Video.
ProfMatteson. 2009. "Ground-nesting Colletes" Video.

Wasp Wednesday: Not Wasp VI

Many bees are easily mistaken for small wasps, especially the “masked bees” of the genus Hylaeus in the family Colletidae. There are not many characters that can be used to separate these bees from wasps that are easily visible in the field. Mostly it just takes a practiced eye to tell them apart.

Masked bees, also known as yellow-faced bees, are nearly hairless, accentuating their resemblance to wasps. While wasps have hairs, too, those hairs are simple and unbranched. The hairs of bees, in contrast, are plumose and almost feather-like. Unfortunately, this character requires a minimum magnification of sixty power to observe. Live bees and wasps don’t usually cooperate for microscopic examination.

Hylaeus are not parasitic on other bees, so a logical question would be how does a hairless bee transport pollen and nectar back to its nest? The answer is that the female bee ingests mostly nectar, and stores it in a special internal organ called the “crop.” Once the bee arrives back at the nest, she regurgitates her load and stores it in a cell. Several such loads will provide enough nourishment for the single larval offspring in each cell.

Masked bees are solitary, meaning each female makes her own nest. Without strong jaws, or a rake of spines on the front legs, Hylaeus bees are pretty much forced to use pre-existing burrows of other insects in the soil, cavities in the pith of twigs, or in abandoned galls. Indeed, most species of Hylaeus nest in hollow stems or twigs. Individual cells are lined with a natural plastic, a type of polymer secreted by glands in the female’s abdomen.

Male and female masked bees can be distinguished by their facial markings. Females generally have yellow, white, or ivory markings on the inner margin of each eye. Males have the entire face colored yellow or white.

Photo by Tom Murray via Bugguide.net

There are around 900 species of Hylaeus, collectively distributed worldwide, with about fifty in North America. The genus reaches its zenith of diversity in subtropical Australia, and the Hawaiian Islands. There are, or were, sixty species in Hawaii. Several of those are threatened or endangered, in part by invasive ant species that have been introduced from elsewhere and prey on the bee eggs, larvae, and pupae. Seven species of Hylaeus are considered “critically imperiled and possibly extinct,” according to the Xerces Society.

Photo by Tom Murray via Bugguide.net

Because the female bees collect so little pollen, it has been problematic to determine which species are generalist pollinators, and which are specialists. Recording which flowers the females visit has only provided a little insight. Analysis of pollen grains in the larval feces of three species in Michigan revealed that pollen foraging skews toward members of the Rosaceae when those flowers are available, and Asteraceae otherwise (Scott, 1996). The western U.S. species H. bisinuatus apparently visits White Sweetclover, Melilotus alba exclusively, even when other flowers are available. The Australian species H. alcyoneus visits only Banksia flowers. Still, the vast majority of species are assumed to be generalist pollinators.

Masked bees will readily nest in artificial bee boxes, be they bundles of thin straws, sumac twigs, or blocks with small diameter holes drilled into them. Consider constructing one of these and hanging it on a south-facing exterior wall, tree trunk, or similar situation. Be sure to include a “roof” to protect the entrance holes from rain, and elevate it at least three feet from the ground. Many websites exist with further hints on how to build such nest boxes.

Lastly, don’t fret if you can’t always tell the difference between masked bees and wasps. There are records whereby species of Hyleaus were originally described as wasps by scientists.

Sources: Scott, Virginia, 1996. “Pollen Selection by Three Species of Hylaeus in Michigan,” J Kans Entomol Soc 69(4): 195-200.
The Great Sunflower Project
”Aculeata Agonistes: Yellow-faced Bees”

Wasp Wednesday: Not Wasp?

The beginning student of Hymenoptera (the order of bees, wasps and ants) cannot be blamed for misidentifying some members of the group, especially in the field where close-up and magnified views of the subject are impossible to obtain. The bees of the genus Nomada, for example, are easily mistaken for wasps.

The first time I encountered one of these “cuckoo bees,” I was convinced it was a “beewolf” wasp in the genus Philanthus. After all, there was a picture of Philanthus politus in Howard Evans’ wonderful book Wasp Farm that was a dead ringer for what I saw. Well, black-and-white photos don’t translate too well, and that species of beewolf does not occur in Oregon, where I saw my “wasp.”

There are more than 300 species of Nomada in North America. They are kleptoparasites of other solitary bees, meaning that their larvae feed on the pollen and nectar stored for the larvae of the host species. Members of the genera Andrena and Agapostemon are the common hosts for Nomada. Consequently, cuckoo bees are usually seen in the early spring, when Andrena bees are nesting. Watch for Nomada bees flying low over the ground in sunny openings in woodlands and along forest edges.

Because cuckoo bees exploit the hard work of the host bees, female Nomada have no “pollen baskets,” or dense brushes of pollen-collecting hairs on their bodies. They are quite naked, in fact, which adds to their wasp-like appearance.

Compare the bees in these images with the Cerceris wasps from last week. You may have a hard time telling the difference. I did, too. For a bit I was convinced I had images of a Nomada bee instead of a weevil wasp.

There is some consolation in the fact that our current scientific understanding of the phylogeny of bees and sphecoid wasps shows that the two groups are closely related. Sphecidae, Crabronidae, and all the bee families are now grouped under the superfamily Apoidea. Bees are apparently just wasps that at some point in their collective genetic lineages stopped hunting prey and started gathering pollen and nectar. Feel better now?

The "Bully Bee" Gets a Makeover

I like my Facebook friends. They share important bits of news with me, like a recent story about the European wool-carder bee, Anthidium manicatum. I saw this species for the first time last summer while I was in western Massachusetts. Males of this species, like the one pictured below, are indeed impressive creatures, but apparently now worthy of their killer reputation.

The complete story can be found here. Apparently the story was inspired by another story that went “viral” on the internet due to sensationalized and erroneous accounts of the wool-carder bee. My compliments go to the Reporter reporter for doing a most excellent job in researching the facts, interviewing the proper experts and communicating the right information in an understandable language. I was surprised myself to learn that the accidental introduction of A. manicatum dates back to 1963, in New York state.

We do have native species of Anthidium here in the North America, but they are not seen that often, especially in urban areas. The female A. manicatum shown below was, like the male, seen in a butterfly garden on the campus of the University of Massachusetts in Amherst last summer. She is scraping off the hairy fibers from this leaf to line one of the cells in her nest.

Please feel free to write me with links interesting news stories related to insects, spiders, and other arthropods. You can reach me at BugEric24ATyahooDOTcom. We need to reward good reporting and expose the kind of bad reporting that spreads misinformation. Thanks.

Metallica

My last entry on cuckoo wasps prompts me to pen (keyboard?) a complementary article on the metallic green solitary bees that are frequently mistaken for cuckoo wasps. Indeed, to the untrained eye they appear essentially identical, so how do you tell the difference?

Perhaps the best way to tell cuckoo wasps from those metallic members of the solitary bee family Halictidae is by behavior. Consider this:

• Cuckoo wasps are seldom found on flowers.
• Metallic bees are usually quite common on flowers.

Both cuckoo wasps and “sweat bees” are fond of the liquid waste products (honeydew) of aphids and scale insects. I once found a huge number of sweat bees on a small, infested oak tree in Cincinnati, Ohio.

How the different insects move about is also telling:

• Cuckoo wasps flit about, and once they have alighted dash about with quick, jerky movements.
• Sweat bees tend to fly and alight more directly, and move less swiftly than cuckoo wasps.

Both the wasps and the bees will sometimes pause to preen themselves, usually resting on a sunlit leaf to do so, but the bees generally take longer to do this than the wasps do. Male sweat bees will perch on leaves and stems to watch for passing females.

Appearance of the two insects is often not sufficient to distinguish them from each other, but if it has pollen on its hind legs it is not a cuckoo wasp. Only female sweat bees collect pollen, using brushes of hairs called “scopae” on the hind legs to store the grains for the trip back to the nest burrow.

There are several different genera of metallic green bees in the Halictidae family, their relative abundance changing somewhat with geographic location. The most widespread and easily recognized may be those in the genus Agapostemon. Male Agapostemon species have only the head and thorax metallic green. The abdomen is banded in black and yellow pigments. Females of Agapostemon virescens have a black abdomen with bands of white hairs (see image above). Females of most other Agapostemon are wholly metallic green, but also rather hairy.

More confusing are members of the tribe Augochlorini (image immediately above, and below). The three genera in this tribe, Augochlora, Augochlorella, and Augochloropsis are virtually identical. Unless you are already an expert on them, you have to collect a specimen and put it under a microscope to deduce which genus it belongs to. All are bright metallic green, blue-green, though the common eastern U.S. species Augochlora pura is frequently brassy, coppery, or bronze in color.

The nesting behavior of the sweat bees is quite remarkable as well. While cuckoo wasps have no nest, instead seeking the nests of other solitary wasps where the female cuckoo lays her eggs, sweat bees excavate burrows in the soil (or in rotten wood in the case of Augochlora). Consequently, both cuckoo wasps and sweat bees can sometimes be seen investigating cavities in dead standing trees or logs.

The genera Augochlora and Augochlorella include at least some species that exhibit communal nesting or primitively social biology. This is also true of Agapostemon virescens, where several females may share one nest entrance. I remember discovering a nest of this species in a neighbor’s yard in Portland, Oregon when I was a child. I would spend hours watching the females come and go, and the “guard” bee pop its head out of the single nest entrance atop the little mountain of excavated soil (“tumulus” as scientists call it). Sometimes she would come almost completely out of the nest, looking around anxiously for signs of danger.

It is difficult not to assign such insects as “heroes” or “villains,” or ascribe human personality traits to them. They are very captivating organisms once you get to know them. Do enjoy watching them, and share your observations where you are able. There is still much to learn about them. Given our changing environment and climate, chronicling the adaptations of bees and other organisms will be paramount to successfully protecting them and the pollination services they provide to plants.

Panning for Bees

Yesterday (Saturday, August 8) I was invited to participate in a mini survey of local bees on the grounds of the Mount Grace Land Conservation Trust in Athol, Massachusetts. It was a unique event that revolved around the use of “pan traps” for bees and other insects that had been set out the day before.

We were fortunate to be under the guidance of Joan Milam, a largely self-taught bee expert from nearby Montague. She explained how pan traps are normally deployed. Pans (disposable plastic bowls were used in this case) of different colors are filled with water to which a single drop of detergent is added to break the surface tension. Bowls that are white, yellow, or blue seem to be most attractive to the wide variety of bees found here. They are often arranged in arrays, the distance between bowls carefully measured. Each separate trap can be addressed as its own sample, or the entire array can be the collective sample.

We collected the bowls, pouring the contents into a mason jar and then filtering the water and soap out with a piece of windowscreen fitted under the screw-on rim. Back inside the offices of the land trust we set about the task of rinsing and drying the catch. Turns out that bees and many other insects can take a surprising amount of abuse in the rinse and “tumble dry” cycles without undo damage. The biggest challenge is not melting the chitin in the exoskeleton.

Meanwhile, a few of us took our time in the field looking at what was currently on the goldenrod and other flowers, that might have escaped the pan traps. One such pollinator was this female leafcutter bee in the genus Megachile. Another was this flower longhorn beetle, Judolia cordifera, brought back to the makeshift lab where I took its picture before releasing it.

Several folks brought microscopes and we set about sorting the bees from look-alike wasps, flies, and other insects, then pinning them and further identifying them to family, genus, and species where possible.

This “crash course” in bee morphology was well worth it. We even got lunch provided, and took home a handy hand-out for our own use later. Special thanks to Sarah Mildren, Learning Services Coordinator, and Sean Pollock, Director of Finance and Operations, both of the Mount Grace Land Conservation Trust, who facilitated and hosted the event, and to Joan who was so patient with us novice bee people.

Let Sleeping Wasps Lie

Awhile back I wrote an entry about the sleeping habits of solitary bees (“Let Sleeping Bees Lie”) that I observed and photographed in Tucson, Arizona. Here in western Massachusetts, I was fortunate enough to observe the sleeping habits of solitary wasps in the genus Ammophila, family Sphecidae. Known commonly as thread-waisted wasps, the females are energetic hunters of caterpillars, which they paralyze and store in a subterranean burrow as food for a single offspring.

There are many species of Ammophila found across most of North America, but they reach their greatest diversity in the arid west. More on that in a later post.

Get a grip!

How these wasps manage to get any sleep in this incredibly awkward position is beyond my comprehension. Maybe it is the wasp version of yoga, I don’t know. Simply gripping a twig with your jaws must be hard enough, let alone propping your body at an angle away from your perch. Though solitary, it is not at all uncommon to find loose aggregations of several thread-waisted wasps bedding down in a small area, like this. I once found a cluster of them at Smith Rock State Park in Oregon that was packed so densely that I initially mistook them for some strange flowering plant.

Like solitary bees, the wasps tend to turn in early, just around dusk. They can also appear to be in torpor (the scientific word for inactivity), but actually be quite alert and able to rapidly disengage from their perch. I approached another specimen on a later date, and it quickly regained “consciousness,” much to my chagrin.

There are sleeping bees here in Massachusetts, too, that adopt the same “look ma, no hands” biting grip as the cuckoo wasps in Tucson. This little bee is another parasitic type, in the genus Nomada, family Apidae. They are parasitic on other solitary bees, especially members of the genus Andrena.

Keep a careful eye out for these sleeping insects, especially in open areas with dry, twig-like vegetation, and around forest edges, even around your yard or garden. Solitary wasps and bees can be approached fearlessly, as they are not aggressive and females will not sting unless physically molested. The males possess no stingers. Well, all this talk about sleep has me yawning. I think I’ll turn in early. I also have a strange compulsion to bite the bedpost….

Let Sleeping Bees Lie

One of the many fascinating aspects of the lives of solitary bees is that males will often come together, right now, over me…No, wait, that can’t be right. That would be the Beatles. Male solitary bees, however, frequently gather in “sleeping aggregations” where they spend the night, or rest during inclement weather.

Over the last few weeks I have been fortunate enough to witness a few of these low-key bachelor parties here in Tucson, Arizona. My walk home from work in the evening would reveal longhorned bees of the tribe Eucerini (family Apidae) bedding down atop desert marigolds. There were generally at least two per flower, sometimes several, and occasionally one lone maverick. Only male longhorned bees have the long antennae that give this tribe its common name. Females have much shorter feelers.

You would think that being so exposed, the stingless males would be highly vulnerable to nocturnal predators, but this does not appear to be the case. Indeed, I often found them just beginning to stir the next morning.

A different kind of perch, and sleeping posture, is adopted by male cuckoo bees, Xeromelecta californica. Here, three individuals are clinging to twigs on a mesquite sapling. They are gripping the plant with only their jaws. That cannot be comfortable. I originally noticed only one member of this trio, in restless flight, seeking a better “bunk” to land on. They were also taking after the geriatric set, retiring early, at about four in the afternoon. One ultimately re-settled on the tip of a thorn.

These social gatherings are very modest in size. I am hoping to capture images of much more spectacular events later in the year. Stay tuned for entries on sleeping wasps as well. For more on this and other odd bee-haviors, check out the Urban Bee Gardens website.