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Bees: Understanding Their natural History, Diversityand Importance 10/30/2014 3:03:00 PM

Various Insects Called Bees

Bees and Bee like wasps distinguished by feeding habits

o Wasps tend to be carnivores (eat catipillar)

o Bees get protein from pollen

Cultural image of Bees often differs from Cultural Knowledge

Name a beeHoney Bee

Honey Bees are not yellow and black

o Bumble Bees are yellow and black

Bees are very diversed

Worldwide=20,000

U.s+Canada

Eastern US=900

Diverse in Social Organization

Social

o Honey Bees

o Bumble Bees

o Some sweet bees

o Aggressive and nest defensive

o Seasonal production of males and new queens

Solitary

o Most bee species males and females produced same time

Diverse nesting places

Honey Bees and Bumble Bees nest in Large cavities

Some take linear chambers in wood

Some excavate plant material

Excavated Soil

Diverse ways to get pollen from plants to offspring

Bumble bees and honey beescarry pollen on corbiculum

o Hollow holes in legs

Most bees have a dense brush on back of the legs

Chelostoma Philadelphi

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Hyloeus offinus

o Eats pollen and carries internally

Regurgitates to feed offspring

o Epeolus Bifasciatus

Takes pollen from other nests Depends on groundcherry

Diverse in Color and Shape and Behavior

Long Horned Bee

o Refers to antennae

Wool Carder bee

o Takes the hair off of very hairy plants

Constructs the nests from that hair

o When comes in contact with another bee on a flower it will

attrack the other bee

Mason Bee

o Carries mud in candible

o Leafcutter bee

Uses leaf to create cavities in nest

Basic life cycle for ground nesting bees

Collects from flower Tunnel into ground

Egg in tunnel

Hatches in to larva and pupa

Bee pollination:Key to agriculture and ecosystems

72% of all agricultural crops are pollinated by bees (squash,

peppers, beans, cucumber, melon, most orchard fruits

1/3 of food consumed by humans

Most micronutrients

Pollinate many wild plants

o Key to plant reproduction in the whole food chain

Honey Bees the most agriculturally important

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Highly transportable

o Can easily be put on trucks and then put where they need to

deploy pollinators

Bee diversity within agriculture can improve efficiency of honey bees aspollinators

By bumbing honey bees, other bees can make bees not just

pollinate one flower but move on to several

Honey Bees are not always efficient

Alfalfa leafcutterbee

o Very efficient

Alkali Bee

Honey bees are not always dependable pollinator

Not fond of squash

Squash bees the most common squash pollinator across 25 farms in Virgina,

Maryland, and West Virginia

No one knows where they are actually coming from

Migrated with cultivation of squash and gourds by native americans

ONLY collect pollen form squash and gourds Life is so connected to the pollen from these vegetables

o The males sleep in the flowers so they can mate with females

on the flower

Squash bees occur where there are no wild hosts

Supporting the squash bees are cultivated plants

Squash bees nest under squash plants in fields and gardens

Honey bees cant always get a reqrd

Why go for flowers

o Nectar

o Pollen

China Fir Shedding Pollen

Bees avoid this

Lily anther

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Sticky pollen on outside

Easy to scrape up and take

Porisidal Anthers

Pollen is all inside of anthers

Buzz pollination When bees shake the pollen out of anthers

o Honey bees are incapable of doing

this

Bumble Bees can

o Mates

o Shelter

Promoting Bee Populations

Bee Biodiversity and Abundance

o How affected

Food abundance

Incidental risks

Parasits

Nest site availability

Food temporal availability

o Key risks

Parasites pesticides

Why focus on bumble bees

Among the most dominant bee

o Groups ecologically in temperate ecosystems

Among the most economically valuable groups of wild pollinators to

crops

Economically valuable for greenhouses

Conservation Concerns: of 250 Species worldwide, 33 extinct

Losing Some North American Species last 30 years

B. Pensylvanicus

B. Accidentalis

B. Franklini

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B. Affinis

B. terricola

Candidate Pathogen: Nosema Bombi

Parasite on northamerican bumble bees

Virginia Working Landscapes

Smithsonian InstitutionBlandy Experiment

Rusty Bandit Bumble Bees

What factors control bumble bee populations in Virginia

Nonparasitic Bombus species historically in Virginia

Difficult to study what is gone or very rare

Nosema Fungus may be contributing to the decling bees

Bumble Bee Phenology

Colony founding (march-May)

Colony development

New queens+ first males New queens over winter (june-late august)

o Everyone else dies except for the queens that bury

themselves under ground from the winter

Longer the colony cycle is, the more likely you are to transmit

diseases around to eachother

However the plus is that you get more quees

Is it hard to be a late season bee?

Flowers plummet around the later October time

o Have to tolerate a time when there arent many resources

Comparing Return of Resources with flowering

Conopids

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Fatal parasites of bees

Incredibly common and fatal

30% of bees moved very quickly to 60%

Conopid Flies

Connects to bee and sticks egg inside bumble bee

Larva takes over the inside of the bee

Consumes bee from inside out

Stays inside of the bee for almost a full year

Manipulates the host into doing abnormal things

o Causes bumble bees to dig its on grave

Helps the fly

o Turning on the genes in the bee that makes only the queens

dig into the ground

How does the fly really get out?

o Just climbs out of the bee

How quickly does the bee get infected

o In early July, 50% chance of parasitism at 17 hours of flight

o Incredible pressure for the bee to get to the next summer

o

It is hard to be a late season bumble bee

Parasitism

Food scarcity

More likely to carry illnesses to colony

Colony Collapse disorder

Phenomenon where all working honey bees just disappear

Currently unresolved

o Pests

o Management

o Pesticides

o Synergistic effects: take one from any two categories and

combine

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Many different pests of honey bees

Hive beetle, Africa

Verroa Mite, China

Pesticides Neonicotonioids

o Characteristics

Systemic

Goes into a plant and then every part of the plant

carries that pesticide

Highlt tosic to invertibrates

Long live in soil

o Routes to exposure

Pollen and Nectar

Drift form planting seeds

Onto flowers and next sites

Amount of pesticide on one corn kernel is

enough to kill 80,000 of honey bees

o Applicants

Soil drench

Trunk injections

Seed coat Follar spray

o Sublethal effects in many studies, all studies limited in how

convincing they are

Alters learning and memory in honey bees

o Variations

Variation in residue among neonics and plants

Vatiations in residue among treatment methods

Varaitions in effect on different species of ebes

o The unkown

Few convincing studies-difficult to carry out at the right

scale. The bes studied bee (honey bee) is the hardest

to study

o What to do with limited amounts of data

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Europe is far more risk averse2yr ban on many uses,

wants to be convinced of safety

US continues to support product development until

convinced of harm

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