Honey Bee Side

Honey Bee Booty

Apis mellifera

The name, from Latin, means “honey carrying” and refers to the ball of pollen they carry on their legs (seen in the top photo). This one was buzzing about a plum tree bloom at the Raulston Arboretum in Raleigh, NC.

The Social Life of Honey Bees
Honey bees are incredibly cooperative in a large colony structure, unlike the Carpenter Bee which tends to be fairly solitary. Honey bees are known for creating their nests out of wax and storing honey. Though other bee species also create honey, there is only one true type of honey bee (genus Apis). Their social behavior and high level of cooperation isn’t unique to bees as bumble bees and stingless bees also share a degree of their gregarious impulses. Their eusocial organization defines their hive segments with worker bees (usually sterile females), drone bees (fertile males) and one queen bee.

The Queen Bee gets to make loads of babies (8 years of up to 1,500 a day). She is larger than the other bees, has a chewing mouthpiece and her stinger is not barbed so she can use it deliver venom multiple times.

The Drones (boys) have one job – to mate with the Queen. They have bigger eyes (to spot the lucky lady). Not many Drones hang around the hive and aren’t essential beyond mating – which is why when the magic is over they are evicted from the hive and left to die (generally living only 8 weeks). Since the bee stinger is a modified ovipositor with a gland to deliver venom, the boys can’t sting. They are totally harmless.

The Workers (sterile females) do just about everything to keep the hive running and they are very adept at doing so. The young workers actually work in the hive – making combs, royal jelly, temperature regulation and helping with all the babies. When they get old they go out to collect nectar. They have special pollen baskets on their legs (seen in the photos above, called a corbiculum) and an extra stomach for storing and transporting nectar. They also have 4 glands near their belly to produce beeswax. They have a straight stinger with barbs that they can only use once. When a honey bee stings you the barbs ensures the stinger gets stuck in your skin, releasing venom but also ripping out the abdomen of the bee spelling certain death. Worker bees can live anywhere from 6 weeks to several months depending on when they were born in the season.

The Sweet Stuff
We’ve been fascinated with bees for quite some time – likely because they make such tasty things. By harvesting and refining nectar they make honey as a food stock. Bees need the honey over winter because they do not hibernate but rather stay active and need to keep metabolizing honey for energy. Bees also make beeswax (to build the nest), propolis (a bee glue made from plant resin to seal cracks), and royal jelly (a super food secreted from the head of young worker bees given to babies or queens).

For more fun, my favorite show Nova did an awesome segment on Honey Bees. Check out Nova’s Bee Special!

Oh, and hi Rob! Thanks for hanging in there. I promise this blog with get more love soon!

Carpenter Bee & Leatherwing Beetle

Carpenter Bee on Goldenrod

Carpenter Bee Side View

Xylocopa virginica

The bee above was hanging out on some Goldenrod in the Raulston Arboretum. Looks like she made friend with a Leatherwing Beetle. The last one is totally nom nomming all sloppy like in some pollenicious goldenrod.

There are over 500 species of Carpenter Bee worldwide. The one above is most likely an Eastern Carpenter Bee. They are generally broken down into two main category – small and large carpenter bees. The one above is considered part of the large carpenter bee group. Carpenter bees can sometimes be mistaken for bumble bees because of similar size/coloration. One good way to tell the difference is that carpenter bees have shiny abdomens, where bumble bees are hairy on their abdomen/booty. Carpenter bees are generally solitary, but many of the females will nest near their daughters/sisters and may share some duties. Even though they are generally solitary, they can be social and interact beyond mating time – but they usually nest alone (rather than in a communal hive).

Namesake 
The bees are named carpenter bees because they nest in wood, creating a perfect little circle for their opening. The bees make their nest by burrowing into the wood and vibrating their bodies and mandibles against the wood. They don’t actually eat the wood – it is thrown out or recycled and used to build partitions in the nest. They very carefully build nests to house their eggs/young ones. Strangely enough – the Carpenter Bee eggs are proportionately considered very large – some of the largest in the insect world. Oh poor baby mama!

Food
Carpenter Bees are incredibly important pollinators for flowers. However, they have also been known to “rob” flowers of their nectar. This generally occurs with tubular type flowers that can be difficult for the bee to access. The bee will make a cut in the tub part of the flower and steal the nectar – causing some damage to the flower and not pollinating it in the end. I kind of like when I see examples of cheating in nature though… Innovation and cuttin’ corners! 

The Ouch Factor
Males are often seen hovering around nests (looking for mates, of course) and have been known to go after some animals – however, males have no stingers. Female carpenter bees do have stingers (which are modified ovipositors), but are not aggressive and generally won’t sting you unless you harass the poor ladies. When the sassy ladies do decide to sting you though, it is a fairly painful sting.

Velvet Ant

Velvet Ant Metasoma

Pseudomethoca simillim

Latin for “oh this is going to hurt”. No, not really. But – this fuzzy little dudette isn’t an ant at all. It’s a flightless wasp and is commonly called a Velvet Ant or a Cow Killer (Ant). This one was found on Pilot Mountain in North Carolina a few hours before sunset (these guys are generally nocturnal). 

Oh that sting!
Cow Killer? Doubtful. But the sting of the female is reportedly so painful as to knock a cow out. Really. Referenced to be between a 3 & 4 on the ever-poetic Schmidt Pain Scale referenced in the Sweat Bee post. Like other wasps, they can and will sting repeatedly.

And since thou gives but does not like to receive, the “skin” (integument) of the Velvet Ant is especially tough to guard against wasps and bees while it invades their nests. Generally the Velvet Ant is not aggressive and will often try to avoid confrontation. It even has a specialized stridulitrum on their metasoma that produces a chirping/squeaking noise to warn predators. 

Velvet Ant Reproducing & Population
Velvet Ants occur worldwide but generally stay in tropical climates where it is warm and sandy. They are fairly common in the American Southwest and the oldest known velvet ant (25-40M years) came from the Dominican Republic and was found preserved in amber. 

On momentum with their nasty sting, making babies isn’t an altogether pleasant experience either. After mating, the female seeks out the nests of wasps or bees. A Cicada Killer Wasp is a great target since their create their nests on the ground. After the developing cicada killer wasps wind themselves tightly into their cocoons, the velvet ant lays her eggs on the cocoon. As soon as the eggs hatch they happily and heartily feed on, and eventually kill, the cicada wasp larvae. The pupae velvet ants will stay in the nest until it emerges fully developed.

Sweat Bee

Sweat Bee Close-Up

Lasioglossum (Dialictus)

I really liked these photos because the archive size shows the thick sticky globs of pollen on this bee’s legs so well! 

These photos were taken at the Raulston Arboretum in Raleigh, NC.

I guessed that this one was in the subgenera Dialictus rather than Ceratina because it was brassier (rather than dark) and had fairly pronounced hairs that helped it collect pollen.

“Sweat Bee” though is a large family of bees that like the salt in human sweat. They are generally the most common bees wherever bees are found except for in Australia (perhaps the Aussies are much less sweaty than their other-country counterparts!). Since they are attracted to the sweat on our skin they can become a nuisance. They do sting, but usually only if disturbed. However – their sting is rated fairly low on the Schmidt Sting Pain Index (wow – read those descriptions. Someone just “stapled your cheek”?!?!?!).

Because there are so many different kinds of sweat bees there is an array of different social behaviors that have been examined. Some sweat bees live communally with several females per nest, each with their own entrance. Some are parasitic and invade the nest of other sweat bees, lay eggs that when hatched their larva eats the larva of the host bee, some live solitary in the ground attracted to the salt from seeping groundwater, etc.

Science and the Lasioglossum (Dialictus)

Though I don’t have full access to ScienceMag.com (I’m cheap and I already subscribe to Scientific American (thanks husband!)), there was a neat abstract regarding the bee I captured in the photos above. It seems as though there is scientific evidence that the male bees have an anti-aphrodisiac. The author reports that males are attracted to the odor of virgin females – however, with that kind of a tantalizing signal many males appear. Research suggests that once a female has been contacted by a male that the female’s attractiveness to other males ebbs. Tainted goods or just plain old chemical message courtship?