Bees, cont’d from page 4
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tive, as are shrubby members of the sunflower
family such as skeleton-leaf goldeneye (Viguiera
stenoloba). Observe on a warm sunny day, and in
short order you will see bees working in the flow-
ers. Native bees vary in size, from miniscule and
ant-like to robust, like our big, black carpenter
bee. Many have strikingly colored integument
(insect skin), like the vibrant copper squash bee
(Xenoglossa, family Apidae) and the brilliantly iri-
descent-green sweat bees (family Halictidae); or
colored pubescence (insect fur), like bumblebees,
with their characteristic black and yellow pattern.
Bee abdomens (rear ends) are sometimes notice-
ably banded, as with honeybees, where the band-
ing is dark brown and golden. The rear end of
native bees may be distinctly black and white or
have fuzzy cream-colored bands or bright yellow
markings.
Honeybees are highly social insects, and the
hive itself functions almost as an organism.
Individual bees forfeit their lives for the hive,
aggressively protecting it by stinging intruders. A
few species of native bees live a somewhat social
life, with up to a few hundred bees living in one
colony, compared to the tens of thousands of
honeybees in a hive. Bumblebees are an example
of a native social bee. They build wax nest cells
and live in annual colonies of a few hundred indi-
viduals. However, most native bees are solitary,
meaning one female builds and provisions a nest
and lays just a few eggs during her short adult life.
Many species build nests in cavities in stems,
twigs, rotting wood, abandoned snail shells or
other suitably sized tunnels. Most native bees nest
in the ground, however, excavating burrows sever-
al inches below the surface. Soil preferences –
amounts of moisture, slope, alkalinity and other
factors – vary by species, and reproductive success
depends upon the availability of both vegetation
and appropriate nesting soils.
Pollen is the ecological tie between bees and
flowering plants and key to the critical role bees
play in terrestrial ecosystems. The male gamete is
housed in the pollen grain, but for the plant to
benefit from sexual reproduction, the pollen grain
needs to be moved from one plant to another.
Along comes a bee, lured by nectar and looking
for pollen to provision her nest. As she is busy with
her important task of collecting nectar and pollen
for her progeny, she is also incidentally pollinating
native vegetation. A bee’s pubescence contributes
to its effectiveness as a pollinator. Fuzzy pubes-
cence has a static charge, and pollen clings to it. It
is this pollen that fortuitously attaches itself to the
bee that is most available for pollinating the next
plant visited. Pollen collected purposefully for her
progeny is carried to the nest in specialized struc-
tures called pollen baskets. Most bees have pollen
baskets on their hind legs. In some, like honey and
bumblebees, the basket is a corbicula, a smoothed
concavity surrounded by curved hairs. In other
species, a dense patch of long plumose (feathery)
hairs forms the pollen basket. In one family, that
Cenizo
First Quarter 2012
Photo by Cathryn Hoyt
A common iridescent-green sweat bee working on
the anthers of silverleaf nightshade. On the upper
half of her hind leg, her pollen basket is loaded with
pale pollen.
of the leafcutter bee (Megachilidae), the pollen
basket is a patch of hairs under the abdomen.
Loaded baskets are quite visible and can confuse
identification, as bright yellow pollen is easily mis-
taken for yellow markings on legs, abdomens,
backs and heads.
One of our most conspicuous native bees is the
robust, shiny-black carpenter bee, Xylocopa cali-
fornica (family Apidae). In West Texas, the carpen-
ter bee takes advantage of dry sotol, yucca and
agave stalks for nesting material. Using her strong
mandibles (jaws), the female carpenter bee chews
a perfectly round entrance hole into the pithy
stem and excavates the inside of the stalk, chew-
ing up the fibrous material and leaving a telltale
pile of sawdust outside the nest. Once a nest cell
is constructed, she provisions it with a mass of col-
lected pollen moistened with regurgitated nectar
called bee bread. After a single egg is laid upon
the bee bread, she seals the cell with a plug of
wood pulp and begins working on the next nest
cell. The bee egg hatches in a few days, and the
larva consumes the bee bread, growing for a few
weeks until it pupates and emerges as an adult
bee. If the new adult is female, she flies out to
mate, then starts her own nest building. Males do
not participate in nest building, but play a differ-
ent role. At flowers, they land for a quick sip of
nectar, but spend most of their time courting
females. Hovering around nest holes, waiting for
females to emerge, their goal is to live long
enough to mate.
News about the plight of the bees invariably
refers to honeybees. Although scientists are still
dissecting the causes of colony collapse disorder,
there is no doubt that bees are suffering from a