As The Toast searches for its one true Gal Scientist, we will be running a ton of wonderful one-off pieces by female scientists of all shapes and sizes and fields and education levels, which we are sure you will enjoy. They’ll live here, so you can always find them. Most recently: Let’s All Panic About Antibiotic Resistance!
Honeybees have the best PR. Starting in kindergarten we learn to have a warm feeling about them, even though most bugs creep people out. But honeybees are kind of cute and fuzzy, they’ll sacrifice themselves to protect their family, they’re a metaphor for diligent hard work, they hang around with pretty flowers, they provide us with sweets. So aside from that little problem with the stinging, what’s not to like?
And they’re even more in news now, with the concern over the mysterious Colony Collapse Disorder. Starting in 2006, North American beekeepers started to report that large numbers of the adult bees in their colonies were basically disappearing. Since then, most years the average losses have been about 33 percent, enough to threaten many of our food crops, which depend on commercially managed honeybee colonies for pollination. Scientists have considered everything short of alien abduction as a cause – disease, parasites, pollution, pesticides, environmental changes – but they’re still not sure exactly what’s happening.
So the adorable and endangered honeybee is practically the giant panda of the insect world – except with the difference that pandas don’t put food on our tables. What no one talks about, though, is that these furry invertebrates have a secret: They’re basically an invasive foreign species. Our honeybees – like most Americans – are descended from immigrants, the hives full of bees brought to North America by European settlers.
But if bees are needed to pollinate plants, and honeybees are newcomers, how were plants reproducing before the Europeans got here? They weren’t just waiting by the phone for centuries for a date.
“Prior to colonization, a mere five or six hundred years ago, the natural world was working just fine here in North America,” says Michael Raupp, professor of entomology at the University of Maryland and Bug of the Week blogger. “So the question is who was hauling the freight, and the answer is the native pollinators, many of which are solitary bees.”
While the sociable honeybee – like other extroverts – hogs the limelight, there are around 4,000 native species of bees in North America, and the majority live the single life. Although they don’t build communal hives, some do their own kind of architecture, and a few are even named for their trade skills. The plasterer bee coats its burrow with a thin layer of translucent “plaster” that it produces. Carpenter bees use their jaws to dig tunnels into soft wood. And the mason bee builds partitions out of mud in her nesting chamber. Others have simpler tastes and simply nest in holes they dig in the ground.
These solitary bees don’t produce honey, but most do provide food for their offspring. (That’s what honey is actually for – when we take it, we’re basically stealing candy from babies.) The female mason bee gathers pollen and makes it into a cake, lays an egg on it, and seals it into a chamber with mud, and the yellow-faced bee makes “bee-bread” from a combination of nectar and pollen. A few are less diligent parents: The cuckoo bee – named after a bird with the same sneaky childrearing approach – lays its eggs in the nests of other bees. Its larvae eat the food intended for the victim’s offspring, and sometimes eats the nestmates as well.
There’s also a native bee that everyone is familiar with: the bumblebee. The bumblebee is social, but its family life sounds so tragic that it might be better off alone. Bumblebees build nests in existing cavities like abandoned rodent burrows, where, like honeybees, they live in colonies with a queen and workers and make honey. You can’t buy bumblebee honey, though, because they don’t produce the huge stores that honeybees do. Honeybees produce so much because they need it to get through the winter, when there’s no pollen and nectar to gather. Bumblebees have a different strategy: everyone dies off at the first frost, except the newly-hatched queens who will start new colonies in the spring.
So if we’ve got thousands of species of native bees, why did European settlers bring their own? It’s because most of the crops we depend on have that same secret in their family history. Maybe the saying “as American as apple pie” actually makes more sense when you realize that apples aren’t native to North America either. The reason Johnny Appleseed had to spread all those seeds, after all, was exactly because we didn’t have any apples here before he did it. Those iconic Southern peaches originally came from elsewhere too, along with pears and cherries and cucumbers and many other foods it’s hard to think of as exotic.
And exotic crops called for exotic bees, because pollinators are often adapted very specifically to specific plants. A classic example is an orchid with a foot-long nectar tube that Charles Darwin discovered in Madagascar.
“Darwin said that there must be an insect with a very long tongue that this thing is trying to attract as a pollinator,” says Raupp. “Some forty years later another scientist discovered a hawk moth in Madagascar with a thirteen-inch tongue that was the pollinator.”
This kind of specialization means that despite its central role in agriculture, there are a lot of things the honeybee isn’t very good at. Native bees are still much better at pollinating the native plants that they’ve coexisted with all along, like pumpkins, cranberries, and blueberries. And honeybees don’t pollinate tomatoes at all, because they can’t get at the pollen in their flowers. But native bees (including solitary bees and the more social bumblebee) know the trick: the flowers need to be vibrated at a certain frequency to release the pollen. Tomatoes are also pollinated by the wind, but when the bees help, the plants set more and bigger fruit. There are also beloved flowers that depend on native bees: azaleas also need their flowers shaken to release the pollen, something honeybees don’t know how to do.
So before you jump on the urban beekeeper bandwagon and get yourself a hive full of those foreign producers of sugary syrup, consider this: you could be the real locavore in the neighborhood, and raise native bees instead. For example, you can attract mason bees to nest in holes drilled in a wooden block, or build them nests made of reeds or thin cardboard tubes or straws.
And if you’re not convinced, here’s one more point in their favor: they don’t sting. Who’s the sweeter bee now?
Tags: gal science, linda lombardi, science, we hate bees
OH, thank god for this article. I mean, thank you, Linda Lombardi! It’s exactly what I’ve been reading about lately. Why do people think that honeybees are the only kind of bees–or pollinators, for that matter–that count the most? I maintain it’s because, yes, they’re pretty and interesting and their social life is fascinating, but I think most of all it’s because they make things we can take from them and use, not to mention make money from. It’s not nearly so glamorous or simply satisfying to make native-bee-friendly environments or drill holes in a piece of wood for solitary bees?
Well done. I really liked this article. 🙂
ugh, sorry about my bad writing. I kept editing it and it turned out I ruined a couple of sentences.
Not bad writing! I giggled and shared with others in the room throughout.
uh-oh. not sure what was funny!
There is no such thing as bad writing when you are complimenting someone’s writing. Thanks!
I would wager it also has a lot to do with the fact that honeybees AREN’T native. If you look at the etymology of native plants in the Americas (their common names especially) perfectly beautiful and illustrious plants were given names that devalued them, like pig weed and milkweed and the like. I assume the same colonialist mindset has colored North American relationships with native bees. I am not an expert on anything at all (neither plants nor bees nor colonialism) but I bet someone smarter than me has addressed this.
(My household is currently building a bee hotel, and our garden is leaning more and more heavily towards native prairie grasses and plants and it is so g.d. exciting when new-to-us pollinators show up.)
How do they knowwww? Likewise, how do cabbage moths know when I plant the brassicas b/c it seems like psychic moth trickery, how quickly they show up.
BUG MAGIC
That’s probably part of it – combine European egos (“settling savage lands!”) with the fact that native plants/bugs probably competed with/damaged settlers’ crops, and you’re probably not going to get an unbiased approach to native American species.
OMG bee hotel. Does it have a name? Will you start a chain?
Bee-With-Us Motel
Bide-A-Bee Manor
?
Raising native bees? Sounds awesome! Do you think that one could raise both honeybees and native bees if one had a large yard, or are the the two types generally bad at co-existing?
They coexist, and are probably already in your yard. Different native bees like having different kinds of habitat than european honeybees, so you can do different things to encourage the natives. I know a lot of research is being done in commercial orchards, where native bees are still very important pollinators (often more thorough than honeybees), but they definitely coexist. The more bees the merrier!
Weeping for the bumblebee, and am slightly horrified by the thought of the hawk moth.
This article is great, and that’s coming from a recovering bee-phobic. Yes to bees!
So are ALL native bees sting-free? Or just the masons?
I think “sting-free” might be overstating it? I thought I read somewhere that it’s a matter of provoking them. Honeybees are notably cranky; some other species are even crankier (“Africanized” [killer] bees); others far less so (bumblebees).
Killer bees are one of my greatest irrational fears.
Bumblebee stings are the very worst stings I’ve ever experienced – I have been stung multiple times inadvertently grabbing bumblebees dozing in my garden. But I have been “stung” by a lot of other, smaller, native bees that are like a tiny itchy pinprick that goes away in 2 minutes. Bees are great! And the native bees are all very beautiful too.
I was stung by a bumblebee once, which hurt less than honeybee stings but still hurt. I don’t know about the rest of the native bees, though.
Hawk moths are so cool–I love them! l saw my first hummingbird hawk moth in Central Europe and I was riveted. I followed it around for 15 minutes, trying to figure out if it was a bird or insect.
I can’t really tell if the article is saying not to worry about colony collapse disorder or is just sort of agnostic about it as it relates to honey bees. I guess I thought we should still be worried about it because I would expect at least some other animals in the affected ecosystems to be susceptible either directly or indirectly to the same things that are killing off the honeybee colonies. (I haven’t read the most recent science, but I seem to hear most often about various combinations of culprits including neonicotinamide pesticides [e.g., Roundup] making the bees susceptible to fungi, viruses and or mites.)
I think we still need to worry about colony collapse disorder, because many of us are very attached to apples and cherries and other non-native plants. We should just also appreciate other types of bees. And plant native plants with native bees in our “in case of societal collapse” gardens.
I didn’t mean to imply we shouldn’t worry about colony collapse disorder, for all the reasons you cite. Like, the honeybees are a canary in the coal mine. I can’t tell if that is a mixed metaphor or not?
Bees are cool. I quite like them.
Except for killer bees. They sound horriffic.
all bees are killer bees if they murder something
I assume this accounts for this article being tagged “we hate bees.”
My parents got on the native bee train two years ago, and now my dad spends time trying out different mason bee houses to see which they like best. We’re not sure how to judge survival, though; a lot of times the little mud plug just sits there and we’re assuming that means the larvae died (potentially as the result of substandard housing) but we’re not actually sure.
“hawk moth in Madagascar with a thirteen-inch tongue”
Oh good, I needed some new nightmares.
Seriously though, awesome and fascinating read!
They look like owl-hummingbirds!
Okay, I rescind my previous comment because that is adorable
Is a hawk moth the same as a hummingbird moth? Because I saw one of the latter last fall. I thought it was a hummingbird, but I subsequently learned different.
Oh wow that is WAY cuter than I imagined. I will take four.
I think this is the moth specific to the star orchid, but there are probably lots of strange adorable things in the family!
This is so great and informative — love all the Gal Science posts, but the biology/zoology ones especially! All we need now is an enterprising group of motivated scientists to go around and attach labels to all of the non-stinging bees so I know which ones to be down with.
Reading through this comment thread, I just made up a song called “LADIES talkin’ ’bout BEES” and it is one part cold medicine and one part my love of ladies + bees, but it’s a really good song, and thank you, Toast, for making this happen.
I would like to learn this song, too. 😀 I have some Nyquil, if one has to be high on cold medicine to sing it.
Ha, well, it is both nasal & atonal so I think you can probably get it without the aid of medicine. Just kind of half-hum/sing-song it under your breath just loud enough to confirm to the rest of your open-floor-plan office that yes, you are a little off.
🙂 So I’m guessing the lyrics to the song “LADIES talkin’ ’bout BEES” pretty much amount to “LADIES talkin’ ’bout BEES”? Cute. I think shuffling around the apartment while doing it is called for.
Honestly, why do you need a one true scientist, when this series of one-offs is so good?
This way, you get ALL the sciences! It’s so great!
Agreed! Personally I like learning a little bit about what a whole bunch of ladies know rather than a lot about what one person knows. Unless they want someone to write about science news regularly which would be great but I think there’s room for both that and this!
I see your point; every time I read one of these I think, “I like this one! But I wouldn’t want to do without most of the others, too!” But speaking as someone who juggles website contributors as well, it is much easier to have one go-to person for a certain writerly beat.
Oh my gosh, yeah! Assorted gal science, like assorted chocolate, is always a delight.
I KNOW! It’s something I happily will not need to think seriously about until the one-offs end (probably 2020).
I HAVE A BEE ANECDOTE TO CONTRIBUTE
My granddaddy was a beekeeper until quite recently, which is in and of itself a delightful thing to be. (So many jars of real honey! Having to buy it in a squeezy bottle for the first time when I moved out was culture shock.) So Granddaddy’s a beekeeper, but my grandmother (to whom he is married) is allergic – like anaphylactically allergic – to bee stings. One time, early in their marriage, she was in the studio audience for a radio show, and was called up on stage for something. They asked her about herself, and she explained that she was married to a beekeeper, but that “I swell up when I get stung by a bee.” She was 8 months pregnant.
A matchless bee anecdote! Once-in-a-lifetime circumstances.
I am amazed at how much Toast readers have to say about bees, but this – this goes far beyond anything a writer could ask for as a comment as an article. Thank you.
Unrelated but this just reminded me of those Nasonex commercials with the Pepe LePew-style bee that were soooooo annoying!
oh, I actually loved that bee. He reminded me of Antonio Banderas.
I find that bee intensely creepy.
(That’s what honey is actually for – when we take it, we’re basically stealing candy from babies.)
Oh. Oh… no. I go through a LOT of honey in the winter because I drink a lot of tea. I’m now horrified.
Yup. Beekeepers who sell their honey will tell you that _obviously_, they don’t take any more than the colony can afford to lose, because hey, they care about their bees and would they do anything that damages the health of the hive? But that same rationale is used by all animal agriculturalists, even factory farmers, so I’d take it with a grain of salt or examine its truth on an individual basis. I myself have looked into the possibilities of minimally invasive and exploitative beekeeping (“The Barefoot Beekeeper” is a great source), and it’s possible, but I doubt that businesses that operate for profit are, by and large, maximally eco- and bee-friendly.
I get my honey mostly from a hobbyist beekeeper who is really a CPA a town over from my office. I figure that he doesn’t operate for profit so I think I may be safe assuming his colony can support this.
1. If the bees don’t have enough food they die and then the beekeeper doesn’t have bees.
2. Usually the beekeeper supplements the hives with sugar syrup to make up for the honey taken.
3. Larvae only grow in cells where the queen laid an egg, and she is excluded from most of the hive box, so there are many many more honey cells than egg cells.
4. Hive boxes are designed to make it as easy as possible to build comb and fill it with honey – nicer than anything found in the wild.
5. Unhappy bees raise a new queen and swarm off to start a new hive somewhere else. If bees are in a hive, it’s because they like it there.
It’s similar in some ways to feudalism, actually. The landowner/beekeeper provides hives and syrup in exchange for honey, and if the tenants/bees are dissatisfied they can vote with their feet/wings. Minus a military and being surrounded by nothing but other asshole landowners.
I just think that if sugar water is so great, why don’t we use it instead of honey and let the bees keep what they make.
Bees!
Bees are great! Particularly bumblebees, aw. Though, okay, they are all best enjoyed from afar.
Also I don’t care how “cute” the hawk moth is, anything that is a moth is awful.
Related: I listened to the Wickerman episode of the “How Did This Get Made” podcast yesterday and had forgotten about how bee-centric that weird island was.
1. If the bees don't have enough food they die and then the beekeeper doesn't have bees.
2. Usually the beekeeper supplements the hives with sugar syrup to make up for the honey taken.
3. Larvae only grow in cells where the queen laid an egg, and she is excluded from most of the hive box, so there are many many more honey cells than egg cells.
4. Hive boxes are designed to make it as easy as possible to build comb and fill it with honey – nicer than anything found in the wild.
5. Unhappy bees raise a new queen and swarm off to start a new hive somewhere else. If bees are in a hive, it's because they like it there.
It's similar in some ways to feudalism, actually. The landowner/beekeeper provides hives and syrup in exchange for honey, and if the tenants/bees are dissatisfied they can vote with their feet/wings. Minus a military and being surrounded by nothing but other asshole landowners.
Apropos of not much at all, the natural history museum on KU’s Lawrence campus has a honeybee exhibit where you can watch the bees fly in and out and climb around in their hive. It’s pretty much fascinating. (They also have a seriously killer fossil collection, too)
RoundUp is a glyphosate, not a neonic. Neonics are insecticides. RoundUp is an herbicide. Unless you dunk a bee in a cupful of RoundUp, it's not going to be harmful to it.
It's my suspicion that the commodification of the honeybee is contributing more to CCD than the incidental exposure to pesticides. We aren't talking about wild bees, here. These industrialized bees are basically factory farmed, and shipped back and forth across the country in order to pollinate huge crops in places they may not have ever visited before. It's completely unnatural, and probably stress-inducing. Unlike disease or pesticide poisoning, CCD is defined by an absence of dead bees; they simply disappear.