Native Pollinators - by Kitty Gillette
What’s Your Favorite Native Bee?
Do you have a favorite native bee? It may be hard to choose. Nevada is home to around 1000 species of native bees. Many of these bees happily forage right alongside the easily recognizable honey bee. Look carefully and observe long enough, and you will be amazed at the variety of magical creatures you see.
Native bees have varied life cycle stages and emerge in different seasons. So, you must observe bees through all of the seasons. For example, in spring you will see mason bees adults that are active for about three to four weeks. Later in the spring and throughout the summer, the leaf cutter bees adults begin to emerge In the fall, digger bee adults can be seen. Many of the native bees are considered solitary bees. This means they do not live in a colony like honey bees. They nest in the ground or in cavities. Bee houses are often built to give cavity nesting bees shelter to raise their young.
The mason bee and its beautiful blue almost metallic color is an interesting candidate for favorite. It is called a mason bee because it uses mud to protect and separate the cell chambers where she lays her eggs. These bees are cavity nesters and great pollinators. They are also a likely occupant of the bee houses. They are early spring emergers, very docile and are only active a short time.
This summer, after a magical experience in the wildlife garden at Valley Wood park, my favorite native bee is trending toward the carpenter bee. When you observe their cleverness they will amaze you.. There is an interesting plant in the pollinator garden called evening primrose. This is a native plant that blooms late summer into fall. It is called evening primrose because blossoms open as the sun goes down. This makes it attractive to evening foragers. On a late evening walk in July, just as the sun was setting, we observed an interesting behavior of the carpenter bee. There were several bees hovering around closed primrose blossoms.
Evening Primrose
These carpenter bees can be seen biting the base of the blossom. After they bite the base, they hover around waiting for the flower to open. As the blossom opens, several bees will rush in to gather the nectar and pollen. Then, they bite another blossom. They seem to understand which ones are ready to open. To our delight we got to see this occur in real time. It is fun to witness the opening of the primrose flower, but add in the cleverness of the carpenter bee to hurry the process along, and you get a memorable experience.
The carpenter bee is at the top of my list of favorites. But, a new candidate captures my attention as summer fades into fall. In a canyon on the edge of my neighborhood where the soil is loose on the banks of the drainage areas, you can observe thousands of native digger bees.
They emerge from the ground and delight in the rabbit brush blossoms, carrying nectar and pollen back into tunnels they have made in the soft dirt. It is fun to witness the activity of the adult bees above ground behavior. For about three to four weeks the female bees gather nectar and pollen and carry it back into the tunnel where an egg is laid. This food supply will nourish their developing young. You can hear the hum of hundreds of bees right around the time of the rabbitbrush blossoms.
Leafcutter Bee
Then, quiet returns. For the rest of the year, the life cycle continues underground as the egg turns into larva and then into an adult bee.I know that next fall, in this very same spot, around this very same time, the next generation will emerge to start all over again.
So maybe, my favorite native bee is the one right in front of me at the time. So many seasons, so many delightful experiences, so many candidates for favorite bee.
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