![]() ![]() We’d love your help with this, too! My upcoming webinar will highlight what we know (mainly about eastern bees) and resources you can use to help document and deepen our understanding of not only very special bees, but all the life around us. Droege, at the USGS Native Bee Inventory and Monitoring Lab, also put out a call to bee researchers and reshares phenologies to remind folks to be on the lookout when various bees will likely be active. When I first put a specialist bee slide show together for the Wild Bee School in Ohio, I couldn’t find photos of many of those listed on the website Jarrod Fowler and Sam Droege created, Pollen Specialist Bees of the Eastern United States, so I asked the participants to consider documenting bees on those plants. That’s the subject of my upcoming webinar on March 16 th (which will be recorded and available on Xerces’ YouTube channel). Knowing when the flowers bloom, there’s a good chance we can see the bees if we grow their host plants at home or visit areas with those plants at the right time. Many people are familiar with specialists like squash bees, blueberry bees, and rose mallow bees. Specialist bees eat pollen from one family, genus, or species, but may collect nectar from a variety of plants. Other bees can be recognized and/or guessed at based on the flowers they visit. (Southeastern blueberry bee photo by Jolie Goldenetz Dollar) Both rose mallow bees (center) and blueberry bees (right) look very similar to bumble bees, but you can guess when seeing them on their host flowers, and by the way they fly, that they are the specialists. ![]() Left, a male squash bee (top right, with longer antennae and a light patch on his face) is staking out his territory-a female squash flower-while female squash bees sip nectar at its base (top left). Many recognize green metallic bees in the genus Agapostemon that have either white or yellow and black striped abdomens.Ĭommon specialist bees important for crop pollination include squash bees, rose mallow (aka okra or cotton) bees, and southeastern blueberry bees. You may find these males tightly congregating on a plant to sleep overnight. Her male counterpart has longer antennae (“long horns”) and a black body, but a big light patch on his face (both have some light-colored hairs on their legs). The two-spotted long-horned bee, Melissodes bimaculatus, is our other all black female bee, except for two tiny white spots on her rear end. The female and male of this species are dimorphic-they look different from one another: both have black bodies, but the male has fluffy light hairs on his front legs that look like big mittens that he uses to cover the females eyes when mating. One’s pollen covered belly and large head make it easy to spot as our only all black leafcutter, known as the carpenter bee mimic, Megachile xylocopoides. In my area, we have two easy to recognize all black bees that are smaller than carpenter bees. cornifrons entering a bamboo nest) and leafcutter bees (in this case the carpenter bee mimic leafcutter, Megachile xylocopoides, on blue mistflower, Conoclinium coelestinum). We usually recognize two genera that carry pollen on their bellies and nest in cavities, mason bees (here an introduced Osmia taurus or O. Most of us recognize European honey bees ( Apis mellifera) and bumble bees ( Bombus spp.), generalist foragers shown here with a specialist, squash bee, nectaring at a male squash flower. Each region has its own set of bees that can be identified without a microscope. Along with those pollen-ful bellies, for mason bees, the dark blue or green metallic color or, for leafcutter bees, their large heads and, often, black and white striped abdomens also help clue us in on the genus. Most of us know mason bees, Osmia spp., and leafcutter bees, Megachile spp., because females carry pollen on their abdomens instead of legs. We also all know bumble bees, Bombus spp., though sometimes they’re mixed up with large carpenter bees, Xylocopa spp., the ones we say have “shiny hinies” compared to bumble bees. We all know the European honey bee, Apis mellifera. Often people don’t give themselves credit for all the different bees they already recognize. So, when I give programs on native bees, I like to highlight all the bees that can be identified to genus or even species in the field. Where I live in North Carolina, there are more than 500 species, and out west, in drier landscapes, that number may double or quadruple. Learning to recognize native bees can seem daunting. Nancy Lee Adamson, Senior Pollinator Conservation Specialist, Xerces Society and USDA NRCS
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