NATIVE BEES Hylaeus euxanthus
tion made of mud, resin, sand or other materials, depending on the species. Each cell is provisioned sequentially, starting with the innermost cell. Once a female has completed the - tion to protect her offspring from the elements, predators and parasitoids. The number of cells per nest depends on the length of the nest cavity and the bee species. Even within the same species, the number of cells a single female constructs depends on how plentiful the resources are in her area. In general, larger cells containing fertilized, and therefore
- ed last are smaller and contain unfertilized, male eggs. Bees, like all Hymenoptera3
have haplodiploid4 sex determination, Waiting for the Guests Despite the common name of these structures, native
bees don’t really use them as “hotels.” Baby bee boxes might be a better descriptor, though certainly not as trendy for sales. Adult native bees don’t live in them. Rather, the females use them as safe abodes for building a nest. Most native bees are solitary. Unlike their gregarious cousins—the honey bees, bumble bees, and the stingless bees—most native bees live alone. Also, in contrast to the social bees, these solitary bees do not care for their offspring. They limit their parental du- ties to provisioning each nest cell with “bee bread,” a mixture of nectar and pollen, then lay an egg on the food stores, and seal up the nest. So how long do you have to wait before a new bee emerg- es from the sealed-up nursery in your bee hotel? Again, it de- pends. The duration between when an egg is laid and the re- sultant bee emerges depends on the species, the temperature, and the seasonal timing of when the egg was laid. Within a season, Hylaeus tend to develop faster than Megachile, with the former taking about 1 month to emerge, and the latter 2-3 months. Warmer temperatures tend to speed up devel- opment. However, in both groups, if eggs are laid towards the end of the activity season, the offspring will hunker down to wait out the winter, entering a state called diapause where they suspend their metabolism until the next season when favorable temperatures recommence. As a bet-hedg- ing strategy, some species may even diapause for more than one season. The triggers for diapause, breaking diapause, and emergence differ between species, and scientists are only just starting to understand the cues involved in these complex lifecycles for a select few species.
the egg as a larva, eats the store of food its mom stock-piled in the cell, undergoes rapid development which includes molting through several larval instar stages, typically four. The well-fed larva then spins a cocoon and pupates, meta- morphosing to emerge as an adult bee. Within a nest cavity, a female creates a series of cells, usually separated by a parti-
where females hatch from fertilized, diploid eggs and males from unfertilized, haploid eggs. Offspring from the eggs letting them build up energy reserves and stake out good desire, the females, emerge.
Who Else Checks In? Even for the best-made bee hotels, creatures other than
bees like to move in. A large variety of cavity-nesting wasps also nest in bee hotels. Some of these wasps in the subfamily Eumeninae, known as mason or potter wasps, seal up their nests with mud. Their nests can be confused with those of Osmia in countries where both occur. Other wasps leave grass or sticks protruding from the entrance. The key dif- ference in all cases between bees and wasps is that the wasp mother feeds her babies a carnivorous rather than vegetarian diet, stocking the nest with whatever animals she can pro- cure—cockroaches, spiders, and caterpillars—rather than nectar and pollen. Spiders, cockroaches and various other insects also like to
make use of bee hotel cavities. There are some sneaky guests – the parasitoids, a few of which are bees themselves. These “cuckoo bees” are kleptoparasites and engage in brood par- asitism, where they eschew all the hard work of a typical bee mother. Instead of foraging for food to provision nests for their progeny, they lay their eggs in the nest of a host species.
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© Kit Prendergast
© Kit Prendergast
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