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Taxonomy
Apidae
EOL Text
Gordons Solitary Bee Page http://www.earthlife.net/insects/solbees.html has great links to beautiful color plates of bees from the turn of the century.
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Rights holder/Author | ©1995-2012, The Regents of the University of Michigan and its licensors |
Source | http://www.biokids.umich.edu/critters/Apidae/ |
Some males fly over or around flowers, literally pouncing on females in order to mate with them. Copulation lasts from a few seconds to a few minutes at most. A male will grasp the female with his legs and sometimes his mandibles in order to hold on while they copulate.
Many female bees only mate once, and males compete to get at them first. Some males even dig down into the soil to encounter a virgin female as she emerges from her larval cell. Most males bees are able to mate multiple times, although Meliponini and Apini male genitalia is torn away during copulation, after which the male soon dies. Some females that regularly mate more than once are found in the genus Panurgus.
Mating System: monogamous ; polygynous ; polygynandrous (promiscuous) ; eusocial
Most bee species are solitary nesters. The female makes a tiny bee-sized chamber for each of her offspring, lays one egg, and supplies the chamber with a ball of pollen and nectar for the baby bee to eat. Then she seals up the chamber and builds another one. Some bees, like bumble bees and honey bees, are more social and build nests or hives. In social bee species, a single queen lays the eggs, while most of her daughters don't reproduce but stay with their mother and help take care of more and more sisters (on average, 60 thousand). Some of the sisters are raised to be new queens, and they and their brothers fly away in the summer to mate and start new nests.
Most bees are solitary nesters. Solitary bees construct their own nests, stocking each brood cell with a ball of pollen and nectar before laying one egg, sealing the cell, and building another. Solitary bees generally dye or leave before their offspring mature. When solitary bees do not leave before their offspring mature, but continue to feed and care for them, they are called subsocial bees.
A colony is made up of 2 or more adult females, regardless of their social relationship. We usually think of a colony in terms of having many workers (all sisters), which do all of the foraging, brood care, guarding, and building, and one queen who is responsible for all egg laying. This is in fact the life of many honeybees (Apis, Trigona, Melipona), and they are considered to be highly eusocial. The queen is completely dependant on her workers, and new colonies are started by social swarms, which fly as a group to a new area never leaving a queen by herself.
Other bees live in much smaller colonies such as bumblebees (Bombini), sweat bees (Halictidae) and carpenter bees (Xylocopinae). Their colonies begin with a single reproductive female who carries out all tasks of nest maintenance including foraging, brood care, and egg laying. After the emergence of daughters, colonial life and a division of labor between the foundress (queen) and her daughters may arise. These colonies are called primitively eusocial colonies. Often, the queen is larger than her workers, but this is not a constant rule.
Bee nests are made up of brood cells, usually with one egg laid in each cell. Most Bombus species however, lay a cluster of eggs together in a wax cell. Cells are made of wax, or dug into wood, soil, plant stems, or mortar. The most complex bee nests are made by Meliponini species, where clusters (combs) of wax brood cells are surrounded by layers of wax or resin food storage chambers, which are further surrounded by layers of wax mixed with resin or mud to protect the colony inside.
Other types of colonies include 2 or more reproductive females who each provision their own egg cells. This is called communal nesting. Most species that make communal nests also have individuals who nest alone. Communal nests can be made up of many species. It is not uncommon to find both solitary bees and wasps nesting communally together. This is especially common in areas where suitable nesting habitat is difficult to find, so individuals nest together in the only suitable areas available. The largest recorded communal nest aggregation was 423,000 bees covering 1300m squared.
Solitary bees tend to line their brood cells with a waterproofing material to protect developing offspring. This material can be wax, pieces of leaves and petals, or varnish-like and made from saliva.
Breeding season: Spring or Summer
Key Reproductive Features: iteroparous ; seasonal breeding ; sexual ; fertilization (Internal ); oviparous ; sperm-storing
Solitary female bees don't tend their babies after they close up their chamber. Bee species that form nests don't seal up the larvae, instead they feed and take care of them as they grow. Male bees never take care of offspring and do very little work.
Parental Investment: female parental care
- Gauld, I., B. Bolton. 1988. The Hymenoptera. New York, New York: Oxford University Press.
- Michener, C. 2000. The Bees of the World. Baltimore, Maryland, USA: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
- Ramel, G. 2005. "Gordons Solitary Bee Page" (On-line). Accessed July 05, 2005 at http://www.earthlife.net/insects/solbees.html.
- von Frisch, C. 1950. Bees: Their Vision, Chemical Senses, and Language. Ithica, New York: Cornell University Press.
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Rights holder/Author | ©1995-2012, The Regents of the University of Michigan and its licensors |
Source | http://www.biokids.umich.edu/critters/Apidae/ |
There are thousands of species of Bees all around the world. Bees can and do live in almost kind of climate. The only places bees do not live are in places with extreme cold all year round. In Michigan there are probably nearly 200 species.
Biogeographic Regions: nearctic (Native ); palearctic (Native ); oriental (Native ); ethiopian (Native ); neotropical (Native ); australian (Native )
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Rights holder/Author | ©1995-2012, The Regents of the University of Michigan and its licensors |
Source | http://www.biokids.umich.edu/critters/Apidae/ |
Collaborating for group decisions: honeybees
Honeybees collaborate when foraging, selecting a new hive through knowledge sharing.
"Researchers at the Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, led by principal researcher Feniosky Pena-Mora, are looking at ways to improve human collaboration during disaster relief efforts. They are attempting to draw inspiration from the collaboration patterns that honeybees use in their decision-making process when selecting a new hive or foraging, ants' behavior when they are under threat, and how infectious diseases spread among human populations. The team includes biological, computer, and social scientists, and civil engineers. The team believes that civil engineers should be a fourth group of first-responders at disaster relief efforts involving critical physical infrastructures. The researchers will develop ad hoc communication networks to spread critical information among first responders, similar to how a virus spreads. Models of collaboration based on study of ants and bees may be useful in understanding the basic principles and best practices when developing strategies to coordinate knowledge sharing in chaotic social settings." (Courtesy of the Biomimicry Guild)
Learn more about this functional adaptation.
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Rights holder/Author | (c) 2008-2009 The Biomimicry Institute |
Source | http://www.asknature.org/strategy/df8649b6cae0b9e739df42001c5073ea |
Apidae species live anywhere there are flowers to feed from. Some bumble bees can tolerate very cold temperatures and live in the far north and high in the mountains.
Habitat Regions: temperate ; tropical ; terrestrial
Terrestrial Biomes: tundra ; taiga ; desert or dune ; chaparral ; forest ; rainforest ; scrub forest ; mountains
Wetlands: marsh ; swamp
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Rights holder/Author | ©1995-2012, The Regents of the University of Michigan and its licensors |
Source | http://www.biokids.umich.edu/critters/Apidae/ |
Adult bees drink nectar and eat pollen, while larvae eat pollen, nectar, honey, and pollen or floral oils.
Pollen is collected by the female parent in solitary species, or by the foundress and or workers in colonies. Females collect pollen on branched body hairs, which are later transferred to the scopa (carrying structure), generally located on the hind legs. An exception to this are the Hylaeus, which are hairless and lack scopa, instead transporting pollen in their crops.
Bees normally collect dry pollen which is naturally sticky, but some bees mix pollen with regurgitated nectar to maximize its sticky qualities. In taxa that have scopa to carry the pollen, nectar is carried in the crop, and is then refined to make honey. Some bees collect floral oils instead of nectar. When a female returns to her nest she regurgitates her crop full of nectar or oil into a honey pot or preconstructed cell for storage.
Foraging Behavior: stores or caches food
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Rights holder/Author | ©1995-2012, The Regents of the University of Michigan and its licensors |
Source | http://www.biokids.umich.edu/critters/Apidae/ |
Barcode of Life Data Systems (BOLD) Stats
Specimen Records: 20207
Specimens with Sequences: 16459
Specimens with Barcodes: 14375
Species: 2613
Species With Barcodes: 2296
Public Records: 2680
Public Species: 464
Public BINs: 368
Bees are essential to the survival of many ecosystems, as without them many plants could not reproduce. Bees pollinate more plants than any other insect. They are so important, that many species of solitary bees in the family Megachile are farmed and cared for because of their importance in pollinating commercial crops.
Some plants have developed clever ways to trick bees into pollinating them. Certain orchids (Ophrys) emit pheromones similar to those of female Andrea, Anthophora, Colletes, Eucera, Tetralonia, and other bees. Males smell the pheromones and are attracted to the flowers thinking that they are female bees. As the male tries to mate with the flower, he pollinates it at the same time.
Ecosystem Impact: pollinates
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Rights holder/Author | ©1995-2012, The Regents of the University of Michigan and its licensors |
Source | http://www.biokids.umich.edu/critters/Apidae/ |
Barcode of Life Data Systems (BOLD) Stats
Specimen Records: 7
Many bees have a venomous stinger that they can use to attack creatures that threaten them or their nest. They also generally nest in places that are hard to reach, or they protect their nest by digging it out of dead wood, soil, or other material.
Known Predators:
- Thomisidae
- other Araneae
- Hymenoptera
- Ursidae
- Formicidae
- Aves
License | http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ |
Rights holder/Author | ©1995-2012, The Regents of the University of Michigan and its licensors |
Source | http://www.biokids.umich.edu/critters/Apidae/ |