Just what are bees, anyway?

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A big black and yellow very hairy insect buzzes rapidly from flower to flower in the garden. That was a bumblebee busily gathering up sweet nectar and dustlike pollen grains from snap dragon, pea and other blossoms on sunny days. But how do scientists who study insects actually recognize a bee from, let's say, a yellow jacket wasp hovering over your ham sandwich on a family outing?

Most wasps are brightly colored but never very hairy as is the case with bees. Common bees in the United States include the familiar introduced European honey bee, along with native sweat bees, leafcutter bees, bumblebees, digger bees and the giant carpenter bees. In all, there are about 4,000 different kinds of bees in this country and perhaps as many as 40,000 worldwide. What do they all have in common? First, they belong to the large insect order called the Hymenoptera which means as adults they have two pairs of membrane-like wings that are usually clear in color. They are almost always quite hairy. The hairs are branched like feathers to transport pollen grains from flower to flower as they go about their "buzziness" finding and collecting sweet nectar and grainy pollen. They may be brightly colored or dull. Only the female bees have a stinger, modified through evolutionary history from an egg-laying tube--the ovipositor. The stinger is a defensive weapon. Most bees will not use their stinger on humans or other animals unless their lives are in danger or you accidentally step or sit on them. Most bees also have some special kinds of hairs on their abdomens or hind legs within which to carry pollen back to the nest. The little black leafcutter bees can appear very comical, almost like flying "Cheetos" snacks if they happen to be collecting sunflower pollen. Honey bees and bumblebees have special indented areas (the "bee baskets") on their hind legs for carrying the pollen home.

Most bees lead solitary lives. Once mated, the females spend the rest of their lives in meadows and gardens collecting sweet nectar and the protein-rich pollen from many types of flowers. Also, most bees either nest by digging burrows in the ground or in hollow stems and twigs in dead tree branches. Very few bees lead social lives as sterile workers in a true colony like the bumblebees or honey bees.

Why Are Bees So Important?

Bees are very important not just to human beings but to flowering plants and other animals on earth. This is because they are the most important animals which pollinate flowering plants. Without pollination, the world would be a very dull, less colorful place in which to live. Our pantries would be nearly empty, too. Except for cereal grains, which are pollinated by the wind, bees are vitally important for pollinating the flowers of our agricultural crops as well as thousands of kinds of environments in our parks and wildlands. Pollination is the process by which animals, wind or water move pollen grains from a flower on one plant to a flower on the same or different plant. This leads to fertilization of the flower and several weeks later fertile seeds are produced within the walls of the fruit that was originally a flower. In fact, bees are such important pollinators that every third bite of food that we take is either directly or indirectly the result of pollinating bees. Remember that the next time you are enjoying honey on your breakfast toast or think about spraying deadly insecticides in your garden. Bees are very sensitive to many chemical pesticides.

Now let's take a look at a few different types of bees and see where they live.

In this first photograph we see a type of solitary bee known as a digger bee, since it digs its own underground burrows in the soil. These are male bees from Costa Rica huddled together sleeping on a twig.

In this photograph, we see a giant black carpenter bee within the old fruiting stalk of a Century plant in Arizona. Note the two cell partitions made of chewed wood fibers.

This shiny metallic green bee is one of the leafcutter bees known as a mason bee, since it uses mud in the contruction of its nest. This female bee is in search of sweet nectar from this pink beardstongue flower.

Bee 54 where are you? These very fuzzy bees are bumblebees used to pollinate tomatoes using buzz pollination in a greenhouse. They all have numbered tags so that we can tell them apart. To people, all bees of one kind pretty much look alike. The tags don't hurt the bees and eventually fall off.

In the rocky canyons of Arizona, many swarms of honey bees long ago left their cozy beekeeper hives and flew out "swarmed" into the Sonoran desert to find a new home to live in. These bees have lived in this rock cavity for many years. Notice the beautiful curtains, the two-sided hexagonal combs they have made from beeswax secreted from their own bodies.

by Dr. Stephen Buchmann

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