Our
West Texas
Native Bees
by Cynthia McAlister
M
ost of us are familiar with the
common honeybee, Apis mellif-
era and the honey and wax pro-
duced by the bees. The relationship
between humans and honeybees stretch-
es back into antiquity. The European
honeybee arrived in North America
with European humans and their other
livestock.
Bees are the most important pollinat-
ing beasts, and when it comes to our
food crops, honeybees are essential. The
relatively inexpensive diversity of fruits
and vegetables available to us year round
is largely due to the work of honeybees.
Such diverse foods as watermelons, avo-
cados, apricots, blueberries, almonds,
vanilla, tomatoes and onions are direct
results of bee pollination, and beef and
milk products are indirect results,
because an important cattle forage crop
is alfalfa, which is also bee-pollinated.
In nature, native vegetation is the
food crop for wildlife, and every animal
is dependent upon it in one way or
another. In addition to food, plants pro-
vide shelter and nest sites. And, particu-
larly important in arid West Texas,
plants help anchor soil and reduce the
effects of erosion. Pollination of a crop
4
of native vegetation is carried out not by
honeybees but by our native bees.
Worldwide there are over 30,000
kinds of bees. There are more than
5,000 kinds in North America and more
than 500 in Texas, and unlike most
organisms, bees reach their peak taxo-
nomic diversity in temperate desert
regions, including the American
Southwest. We live in a bee diversity
hotspot.
There is only one kind of honeybee,
and these bees are extremely common
and abundant, so they are easy to spot
and quickly recognizable. They all look
alike: fuzzy little golden brown bodies
buzzing softly as they fly from flower to
flower, gathering bright yellow loads of
pollen.
In contrast to the repetitive morphol-
ogy exhibited by honeybees, our native
bees are highly diverse, and it is surpris-
ingly easy to distinguish them from hon-
eybees. The best way to learn about
native bees is to find a patch of bloom-
ing native vegetation and start looking.
Shrubs like Texas kidneywood
(Eysenhardtia texana) and bee brush
(Aloysia gratissima) are highly bee-attrac-
continued on page 26
Cenizo
First Quarter 2012
All photos by Cathryn Hoyt
Top left: A robust red-golden male squash bee, Xenoglossa, in a buffalo gourd bloom. In
this species it is easy to recognize males because they have a prominent yellow nose.
Females return to their ground nests at the end of the day, but males rest in flowers. Top
right: Our common honeybee Apis mellifera, head buried in a Texas persimmon bloom;
note the golden and brown banding across the abdomen. Just barely discernable under
each wing is a pale mass of pollen attached to the pollen basket on each hind leg.
Bottom: Tricky tricky! We know it is not a honeybee because of its bright red legs and
abdomen. Its heavily pubescent thorax and head suggest it is a bee rather than a wasp.
And with no visible pollen basket, it seems to be a male.