Honeybee hexagons and the myriad nest structures of bees

Tags

bee nests, Bees, ecology, hive structures, hives, honeycomb conjecture, insects, nature, science

Yesterday’s edition of Krulwich Wonders (which is a science-y NPR blog) addressed the question of why honeybees build hexagonal patterns in the wax combs of their hives.  For example, why don’t honeybees have triangles or circles?

The answer, proved by Thomas Hales in 1999, is that the hexagonal structure is the most efficient and compact of any of the geometric patterns available to the bees.  Here’s a link to the proof, dubbed “The Honeycomb Conjecture”.  (Which is quite catchy, don’t you think?)

So that is all very cool and I love Krulwich and I love Krulwich Wonders, but my biggest problem is that throughout the article, they refer to honeybees as just…”bees.”  And here’s the thing: there is a wide variety of nest structures in the bee world!  Not all bees use hexagons.

For example, you have the bee family Megachilidae (leaf-cutter bees).

Megachilidae: leaf cutting bees cut circles out of leaves and then build nests like the one below, which contains many nest cells.  These figures are courtesy of a U of F extension publication by David Serrano

These solitary bees use leaves (or sometimes petals) to build nests comprising multiple oval-shaped cells, each of which contains an egg provisioned with pollen.

Actually very pretty!  Photo courtesy of J.G. Rozen at wired.co.uk

Bumblebees make honey pots in their hives, so their honey containers are spherical.

Bumblebee hive, courtesy of Elaine Evans, University of Minnesota Extension at scienceblogs.com

And maybe you remember my post about communal aggregations of Halictid bees, which nest in tunnels underground?

“Go away, silly human!”

Or my post about Costa Rica’s social stingless bees?

The stingless bees of Costa Rica form colonies with unique spouts (like this one) near the base of large trees. A certain proportion of the colony is soldiers, which sit around on the outside looking for photographers to harass.

Or Australia’s stingless bees (Trigona carbonaria), which form elegant comb spirals?

An Aussie Trigona on a paperbark (Melaleuca sp)

The spiral combs of the Australian stingless bees, with bumblebee-like honey pots, courtesy of goldcoastpermaculture.org.au

And don’t even get me started on wasps!  I once knew a biologist who could identify the wasp to the species from 12 meters away, just by looking at the shape of the nest.

What does this mean?  There is a mathematical proof to show that honeybee hives are the most efficient use of space, but these other bees don’t exhibit that kind of efficiency.  Does that mean that honeybees are more derived?  Is it related to higher sociality or different caste structures?  Why don’t all bees use hexagons?

So, dear Mr. Krulwich, I love your blog, but when you say “bees”, please be specific!

Yours truly, standingoutinmyfield

What’s buzzing in your area?

Tags

Bees, cherry trees, flowers, insects, Love, nature, photography, spring

I was going to title this, “What’s blooming in your area?”  But I got distracted by bees (again (I know, I know, shut up)).

It started out innocently enough.

I was just looking for some blooming trees on campus.

Against the pallet of yesterday’s blue sky

Not all the flowers look alike! This is a birch catkin (male flowers)

Oh, this cherry is quite pretty.

I could stand to take a few photos here…

Aha! What’s this!?

Is that a…?

Yes! An Osmia conifrons!

So cute!

And that shiny black butt…is it…?

A Carpenter Bee (Xylocopa virginica)!

An OF COURSE our old friend, Miss Apis Mellifera.  What a joy it is to have my friends back!

Bee declines in 2012

Tags

bee declines, Bees, colony collapse disorder, honey bees, nature, neonicitinoids, news

A lot of my friends and relatives have the impression that honey bees are doing better now than in the past.  I think this perception is related to the decline in media coverage…there was a large initial scare about Colony Collapse Disorder when the first losses started occurring, but the media soon lost interest.

In any case, things are not getting better for the honey bee (at least not in the US).  2012 was a year for record losses, including a loss of 80% of hives for some beekeepers.  Those kinds of losses are driving up the price of pollinating bees (a multibillion dollar industry) up 20%, or about 200 US$ per hive (citation here).  At two hives per acre, that’s a big expense.

The beekeepers are really starting an outcry against neonicitinoid pesticides, which have been implicated in the declines, even showing impacts on bee brains.  Others argue that the proof is not water tight, but the correlations are pretty convincing.

So the fight is far from over.  Things still look pretty grim for commercial bee farmers.  A good time to invest in bee biologists?

(Here’s a link to the NYtimes article: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/29/science/earth/soaring-bee-deaths-in-2012-sound-alarm-on-malady.html?pagewanted=1&_r=3&hp&buffer_share=7418a&utm_source=buffer)

Smells like spring!

Tags

anticipation, beauty, Bees, flowers, Love, nature, photography, spring, summer

I was looking for a potential cover photo for a journal that I am submitting a manuscript to, and I stumbled on this beauty from last summer.  Pretty nice, eh?

I think it looks like a painting. (Tradescantia ohiensis, the Ohio Spiderwort)

Doesn’t it make you salivate for summer?  Right now, I’m just excited for SPRING!  The air is starting to get that smell.  Temperatures are starting to get above freezing.  The snow is starting to melt.  The ground is starting to thaw.

Or, in other words, as the cardinal says, SPRING SOON!!!

PS.  If you want to vote, here are the three photos I am trying to decide between for submission.  I’d love your opinion!

1. Apis mellifera on Tradescantia ohiensis

2. Agapostemon sericeus (male) on Echinacea purpurea

3. Agapostemon virescens (female) on Eupatorium perfoliatum

Big Bee News: Legacy data, phenological mismatches, and the negative impacts of high intensity agriculture

Tags

Bees, Climate change, ecology, nature, news, phenology, pollination services, research, science

There are some big bee news stories hitting the presses this morning!  Two research studies came out simultaneously yesterday in the big journal Science (and by some researchers I know personally).  It’s kind of exciting for me to see this research (and my beloved bees) getting so much attention, but there is a downside, which is that the prospects seem pretty dim.

But, before we get too dark, let’s take a look at some of the new studies that have just come out, and what they mean for bees!

The first is a study by Claire Kremen‘s group at UC Berkeley.  Dr. Kremen studies the relationship between agriculture and native bee communities, both in the ability of the wild bees to provide crop pollination services, and in the impacts that agriculture is having on the diversity of wild bees.

Breakfast with (left) and without (right) bee pollination. from scientific american

Because honeybees have been dramatically affected by Colony Collapse Disorder (representing a suite of hazards), the wild bees are becoming more important for sufficient pollination of agricultural crops.  Indeed, native bees can provide 100% of pollination requirements of crops if they have sufficient habitat.  However, Kremen’s work convincingly shows that high intensity agriculture, such as that of northern California (with massive monocultures) has strong negative impact on the capacity of native bee communities to provide these services.

But there is good news here!  Wild bees can be effective pollinators, and their efficacy increases with diversity (number of wild bee species), so it is in our best interest to provide the safe habitat and resources they need to persist and thrive.  I wrote a post on floral resource provisioning strategies a while back if you want to know more.

Okay, so now for the second study, which was conducted by Laura Burkle at Montana State University in collaboration with Tiffany Knight at Washington University in St. Louis.  This study compares a legacy dataset of fantastic proportions with a modern dataset, collected in similar habitat.

The legacy dataset was collected by an independently wealthy naturalist, by the name of Charles Robertson.  Over a period of 33 years in the late 1800s and over an area of more than 225,000 hectares, Robertson observed insect visitation to flowers.  He was competent at both insect and plant identification, and since that time more than 20 species of bees have been named for him.

Our lovely naturalist, Charles Robertson, see also this post by Wash U

Dr. Burkle and colleagues looked at the bees visiting spring ephemerals in a forested habitat.  Spring ephemerals live only for a short period of time, so they are most likely to be affected by phenological mismatch (which I address in this post).  Indeed, this study finds that both the bees and the flowers have moved their phenology up, but that the bees are emerging significantly earlier than the flowers.  The authors suggest that this mismatch is contributing to the disappearance of more than 50% of the bees Robertson observed in his study.

Spring beauty!

They also looked at the quality of pollination services provided by the bees for spring beauties (a type of spring ephemeral) and found that the fidelity of the bees has declined.  In other words, they are carrying more different types of pollen, so they are visiting other flower species.

This is a scanning electron micrograph of a spring beauty pollen grain, from asu.edu

So that seems like pretty bad news.  But keep in mind that a) this study was a lot shorter than Robertson’s (only two years) b) the habitat was a lot smaller (well, that’s not necessarily a plus) and c) these bee species are not necessarily extinct, just locally extirpated.

Anyway, potentially a very interesting example of that phenological mismatching I was talking about last week!  And two very cool bee studies!  What more could you ask for?

Oh yeah, an adorable bee!

You might also want to check out this story on NPR.

Abuzz with electricity

Tags

Bees, bumblebee, cool biology, ecology, electricity, foraging, insects, news, science

Before and after application of charged powder pigments, Image courtesy of Dominic Clarke and Daniel Robert

Well, if this just isn’t the coolest thing ever!

Researchers have recently found that bees use electrical field to find flowers.  The study, published online 21 February in Science Express (Clarke et al. 2013), specifically tested the ability of one species of bumblebee (Bombus terrestris) to detect electrical fields on flowers.

The way this works is that the flying bumblebee develops a positive charge, while the grounded (ha! a pun!) flower is negatively charged.  When the flower is visited by bees, its charge becomes more positive, so bees can sense when a flower has been visited many times (and thus probably has fewer resources to offer).

So not only do bees use polarized light, ultraviolet reflectance, and chemical cues to find the right flower in the meadow, now they also use electrical fields! I am starting to feel quite inferior.

It’s electrifying!

Here’s a link to a press release:  LINK

Bazinga bees are less than humble

Tags

Bees, Euglossa bazinga, Euglossine bees, insects, nature, Orchid bees, science, Sheldon Cooper, taxonomy

My blogger friend, Emma of Miss Apis Mellifera (if you’re fond of bees, you should check out her lovely site!), has just informed me of very exciting news indeed, the naming of a new Euglossine bee!

Now, if you’ve been here for a while, I’m sure you’re familiar with my obsession with bees.  But if you’re new here, take a moment to visit my posts on the less than humble bee, the orchid bee.  Orchid bees (or Euglossines), are the fabulous sparkling gems of the insect world and, even better, they are aromatherapists.  The males collect a cocktail of odours in order to attract females.

I got a chance to see them myself in Costa Rica, and I took some photos of the beauties (this is one of my most popular posts).

In any case, the new species has been named Euglossa bazinga, after one of the catch phrases of a popular television character.  You may know him.

Here’s the article on the bee and its new name: http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/smartnews/2012/12/a-brand-new-bee-was-just-named-after-sheldon-from-the-big-bang-theory

Euglossine bee!

Another Mark Berkery Bee

Tags

Bees, drawings, insects, Mark Berkery, stingless bees, sugarbag bee, trigona carbonaria, truth

Here’s a drawing of another Mark Berkery photograph.  His website is Nature’s Place and the link to the post I drew this from is Truth?

The truth is that these stingless bees are beautiful. 

Native Sugarbag bee (Trigona carbonaria)

“I am the truth. I, the intelligence behind the appearance of any body or thing at all, am, the truth.”

~Mark Berkery

NB: If you like this post, you might also like my other Mark Berkery drawing, which you can access…here!

Learning from the master: Mark Berkery’s bees

Tags

Bees, macro photography, Mark Berkery, Nature's Place, photography

Sorry for my long absence…I was traveling and did not have reliable internet access.  But I’m back!  I have many great stories to tell you. 

I had the unique privilege of meeting one of the world’s greatest photographers recently.  If you read the blog Nature’s Place (and you should if you like insect photos!), you will know that when it comes to macro photography, Mark Berkery’s work is nonpareil.

As I was traveling in his home town, he graciously invited me on an afternoon outing where we searched for bees to photograph and he taught me many things about photography.  Now, obviously, I have a long way to go before I come anywhere close to his skill, but I hope to apply many of the things he taught me to improve my own photography.

If you want to learn more, you should check out his post on how to do macro.  It’s very generous of him to share all of his knowledge!  http://beingmark.com/macro-illustrated/

I still have much to learn…

Go visit…

Tags

bee adventures, Bees, carpenter bee, insects, invasive species, nature, wool carder bee

You should totally go visit Garden Walk, Garden Talk today!  The amazingly keen author of that blog has posted a story about an encounter between two bees and it is funny and entertaining (and full of beautiful photos, as always).

The two bees she observes interacting are the introduced European Wool Carder Bee (Anthidium manicatum), which is so named because it collects fuzz from plants to weave a wool-like cocoon for its offspring.  It was accidentally introduced to the US…found in New York in 1963, by 2007 it had already reached California:

This guy

And the humble Carpenter bee (Xylcopa virginica):

This guy

I have been watching the Wool Carder bees dive bomb other bees (and actually knock them out of the air) all summer, so I am super delighted that Donna caught the whole adventure on film.  I highly recommend that you go visit her blog to read the story (and maybe poke around in the archives as well!).

Some bee to love

Tags

art, Bees, drawings, Hylaeus hyalinatus, insect artwork, insects, Lithurgus chrysurus

Hylaeus hyalinatus and Lithurgus chrysurus (both species were introduced from Eurasia to the US)

Random bee doodles for Friday, woo!

Bee glamorous

Tags

Bees, insects, leaf cutting bees, Megachile latimanus, megachilid, nature, photo shoot, photography

Brought this pretty boy back to my lab for a photo shoot.  He was cooled off in the refrigerator, but released unharmed.  What a beautiful male model, hey?

Sleepy bee. (For the curious, this is a male Megachile latimanus, a type of leaf-cutting bee in the family Megachilidae)

YAAWWWNNNN

“I’m ready for my close up, standingoutinmyfield.”

Look at that hair!

And those eyes!

Work it babee.

How to clean your antennae

Tags

Bees, how to, insects, nature, photography

This little one fell into my watering can yesterday in the field, and in a moment of Mark Berkery inspiration, I photographed her while letting her dry on my finger.  My photographs are not as nice as his, but still cute, I hope!

It’s like how to wash your hair, but for bees.

Step One: Stretch!

Step Two: reach for antenna.

Step Three: grab antenna

Step Four: pull antenna down

Step Five: arrange it so that it can be pulled along the inside of your legs

Step Six: pull it through your legs, thereby cleaning it of any debris

All clean!

Who’s afraid of the big, bad wolf?

Tags

Bees, beewolf, flowers, insects, nature, Philanthus gibbosus, photography, predation, wasps

The beewolves belong to a genus of Crabronid wasps, Philanthus.  They are so called because they prey on bees!

There is a European species, Philanthus triangulum, that hunts honeybees specifically, and it is a minor pest for beekeepers in the UK (if you are one, have you had a problem with beewolves?).

The common species in eastern North America is Philanthus gibbosus, which mainly seems to attack sweat bees (Halictidae).

Philanthus gibbosus on Common Boneset (Eupatorium perfoliatum)

The ironic thing is that these Crabronid wasps share a superfamily with bees (Apoidea) and the adults only need nectar to survive.  It is therefore only the inseminated females that hunt and paralyse the bees that their voracious larvae will ultimately devour.

“Yum, I love nectar!”

The rest of the time they are perfectly harmless!

“Yep, just minding my own business.”

Assassins among us

Tags

Ambush bug, ambush predators, Assassin bug, Bees, insects, nature, Phymata pennsylvanica, Phymatinae

A couple of days ago, I mentioned Cryptic Cryptophagids, which lie in wait in flower heads and grab onto the first unsuspecting bumblebee tongue they encounter.  Well, Cryptophagids are fairly benign when compared to some of the other things that lie in wait on flowers!

One wouldn’t think that a sip of nectar would be such a dangerous enterprise for an insect as well armed as a bee, but it really is!  There are many kinds of ambush predators waiting for a bee to land.  (I already spoke about crab spiders and their unique camouflage here.)

Ambush Bug (Phymata pennsylvanica) on Canada thistle

Then there are the specialists, the highwaymen of the insect universe, the Ambush Bugs of the Assassin Bug family (subfamily Phymatinae, family Reduviidae).  These rapscallions hide in the petals of the flower, wait for a bee to land, and then pounce!

With unfortunate Colletid bee prey

Truly, the troll under the bridge

Cryptic Cryptophagids

Tags

Bees, Cryptophagid, flowers, hitchhiking, inquiline, insects, nature, Phoresy

Cryptophagidae is a family of beetles with the common name of the “silken fungus beetles.”  Members of this family do tend to feed exclusively on fungus, but I have no idea where the “silken” part came from.

Just from that information, you might not think these little brown beetles are very interesting, but they are actually hitchhiking masters.  I wrote a silly story post from the perspective of a silken fungus beetle a while back, but here’s a more sober discussion.

Some Cryptophagid species will hide in flower heads, waiting for an unlucky bumblebee to arrive.

Note the sneaky Cryptophagid, hiding in this Canada thistle. (The lovely bee is an Augochlora pura)

When she arrives and tries to drink nectar, the Cryptophagid grabs onto her tongue and hangs on for dear life as she tries to bat him off.

Cryptophagid on Monarda fistulosa

The bumblebee must return to her hive, where the beetle immediately drops off to find its compatriots, which all live off of the detritus of the nest.

Cryptophagid on a museum specimen of a bumblebee collected before she could return to her nest.

So these tongue-grabbing fungus beetles are really just ordinary hitchhikers of the arthropod universe!

 

Communal nesting bees: Agapostemon

Tags

Agapostemon, Bees, communal, insects, nature, photography, semisocial, sociality

Agapostemon sericeus male on Echinacea purpurea

The insect order Hymenoptera (including ants, bees, and wasps) used to be considered the model of nonhuman sociality.  The famous ecologist (and one of my personal academic crushes) E.O. Wilson used ants as a model for understanding how sociality evolves.  In a talk he recently gave at my uni, he explained that understanding sociality in other organisms is the first step toward understanding it in ourselves, which then allows us to approach the questions: why are we here? where did we come from? where are we going?

Agapostemon bees are sooooo shiny

But sociality, like all things, exists on a gradient.  From what we consider to be “true sociality” (or eusociality) all the way to solitary, with everything in between.  Scientists have struggled to provide precise definitions of each level of sociality, but exceptions and strange things inevitably confound attempts to do so comprehensively.

diving for nectar

In my opinion, bees are a great system for studying sociality because they exist at all of these different levels.  There are solitary bees and eusocial bees, communal and semisocial bees, bees that form dense aggregations and bees that lay a single egg inside a single nest cell in the pith of a reed.

Male Agapostemon virescens, in flight

I should state that I am biased toward bees.  I love them and although that hurts my impartiality as a scientist, there it is.  I am but human.

How can you not love this face?

Without exhaustively addressing the different stages of sociality and the respective phylogenetics of such, I would like to present to you a communal genus of bee: Agapostemon.

What’s this among the grass?

This genus is North American in distribution, and it is especially notable for its beauty: iridescent green thoraxes, often with yellow and black bands on the abdomen.  Sometimes the females are iridescent all over.

A closer investigation.

Agapostemon species are communal because each nest is solitary but the nests exist in aggregations.  Bee scientist Laurence Packer says, “Semisocial is a reproductive division of labour among individuals of the same generation, communal is nest sharing with each individual acting as if solitary within the nest – i.e. digging, provisioning and ovipositing in their own brood cells.

Hello? Anybody home?

Of course, how much interference and cheating there may be in such “communal” nests is largely unknown.  Though reports of fights at nest entrances, rather than welcoming “with open arms” (or more accurately open mouthparts to permit food exchange as is known for Australian communal bees – Kukuk papers), have been made but not, to my knowledge, studied in any detail.”

I see you, little bee!

My friend found these nests in his yard.  There are four entrances, so there is an aggregation, but a different bee guards each nest, so they are communal, not semisocial.

“Go away, silly human!”

Mark Berkery’s Bee

Tags

art, Bees, drawings, illustrations, Mark Berkey, nature, Nature's Place

Mark Berkery writes a blog called Nature’s Place, and if you haven’t been there already, you should gogogo!  He takes the most lovely insect photos and couples them with dreamy and/or thoughtful posts.  I love it.

With his permission, I drew one of his photographs.  It was a lot of fun, and although there are plenty of mistakes, I kinda like the result.  Let me know what you think!

Here’s a link to his photograph:  LINK

I don’t know if anyone is interested in the steps, but I enjoy it when other people put the photos of progress up, so here are some of mine (I’m bad at remembering to do this):

First drawing, black and white. I do this is real quick, maybe 5 or 10 minutes, just by looking at the picture and then drawing what I see.

Coloured pencils! I don’t know anything about art, but gradients and shading are important.
Sorry this is blurry. I have never taken a good photo indoors, ever.

Thorax, highlights on legs.

Wing

Having a hard time with the hind wing.

Background

Tada! Scanned in

Float like a bee

Tags

Agapostemon, Bees, bees in flight, Ceratina, insects, nature, photography

Isn’t that the famous quote?  Float like a bee, sting like a bee?

Jedi bee

I’ve been trying to capture some bees in flight for you, as I did in those Euglossine bee photos from Costa Rica.  (i.e. this:

Euglossine bee!

But it’s hard for a number of reasons.  Most bees are a lot smaller than that Euglossine above.

This Small Carpenter bee (or Ceratina sp.) is only 3 or 4 mm long.

This Agapostemon sericeus is about 10 or 11 mm.

And the bees don’t hover in front of the scent bait, as the Euglossine did.  Instead, they hop around from flower to flower, and they are very fast and hard to keep in focus.

You bee, hold still!

Instead of one bait to attract them to a central location, there are many flowers that they can visit, so I never know where they will bee next!

Sometimes I get them in this awkward half-taking off position that makes them look like they are levitating.

On Betony (Stachys officionalis)

Landing gear out!

And sometimes I get someone else in the background, like a mystery.

Bee-haviour

Tags

Bees, bumblebees, European Wool Carder Bee, insects, Lasioglossum, nature, photography

Listen, I know my photography is not the best, but I’m all about learning.  I have a friend who refuses to do anything unless she is the best right away; she won’t go swing dancing or rock climbing with me because she’s afraid of embarrassing herself.  I’m just the opposite.  I embarrass myself every day.  I’m terrible at everything at first, and then I just keep on plugging.  Because it is fun to learn!

Hopefully, I’ve made progress over the years.  That is my main goal.  I hope you like them; I want to show you how beautiful these creatures are.  I’m quite partial to bees myself, and I think people underestimate their diversity.  There are nearly 20,000 species worldwide.  Far more than just your friendly honey bee!

Here are some shots I’ve taken just this summer (so far) of wild bees.  There is a high probability that I will post more as the summer continues.  Maybe I will even get better at photographing them!

Lasioglossum sp.  Lasioglossum is the largest of all bee genera and (in my opinion) the hardest to identify to species.

Lasioglossum sp.  Helpfully demonstrating her tongue (which assists in identification).

Lasioglossum sp.  Face view, on Woad (Isatis tinctoria)

Lasioglossum sp.  Bee pretty!

Tricked ya! This is a bee mimic, a fly of the family Syrphidae. I love how he/she/it looks like he/she/it is taking the anther in hand to sip from like a tea cup.

Anthidium manicatum on a mint.  This is an introduced leaf cutter bee.  Common name is European wool carder bee because it collects fuzz from plants to line its nests.

I see you hiding under there, little humble bee (Bombus griseocollis) I caught her in the middle of a nap, methinks.

How is it that she gets to nap while we are all working so hard?!