- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Not the honey bee, not the carpenter bee, not the bumble bee, not the cuckoo bee and not any of the other assorted bees minding their own bees-ness in the meadow.
You're not yellow, you're not fuzzy, you're not social and you're just not certain.
Makes you wonder if you're having an identity crisis, right?
Bee scientist Felicity Muth, an assistant professor in the Department of Integrative Biology at the University of Texas, Austin, sets the record straight in her charming book, "Am I Even a Bee?," illustrated by Alexa Lindauer. It's a children's picture book, but let's face it, we're all children at heart, and everyone likes to feel appreciated. We all want to belong.
Fact is, there are more than 20,000 known species of bees in the world and about 4000 of them are native to the United States. California alone has 1600 species. The smallest known bee is the solitary bee, Perdita minima, about 2mm long. The largest bee in California is the Valley carpenter bee, Xylocopa sonorina, which measures about an inch long.
Yet the non-native honey bee, a social bee, grabs all the attention and little Osmia, a solitary bee, wonders if she's even a bee.
With the help of her friend, Xylocopa, nicknamed "Xyla," Osmia discovers that (1) yes, she is indeed a bee (2) yes, she's a pollinator and (3) yes, she's important to our ecosystem.
It's good to see Felicity Muth spreading the word about the diversity of bees, and why, in the process, it's crucial to protect them.
Like human beings, bees come in many shapes, sizes and colors. Some are specialists, such as the squash bee, which pollinates only squash and other members of the cucurbits family. Some are generalists, like the honey bee.
In her real (academic) life, Muth works with commercial and wild bees (bumble bees, mason bees, and squash bees) "using experimental approaches to investigate questions in animal behavior and cognition from an ecological perspective...we also address anthropogenic effects on bee cognition, behavior an health."
Muth delivered a presentation on her book at the Entomological Society of America's joint meeting (with the Entomological Societies of Canada and British Columbia), held last month in Vancouver, B.C.
Muth knows science writing and science communication: her credits include publishing her work in Scientific American and being interviewed on National Public Radio's Science Friday. She holds a doctorate (2012) in animal behavior and cognition from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. She discovered her passion for bees as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Arizona and the University of Nevada, Reno.
"Am I Even a Bee?" is a book you'll want to place in a prominent place in your library--let your "Zoom" audience see it on your shelf. Then, re-read it when you, as Osmia, think others (honey bees) are getting all the recognition, respect and admiration while you're being ignored. In fact, as U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) says on its website: "Native bees are the primary insect pollinator of agricultural plants in most of the country. Crops that they pollinate include squash, tomatoes, cherries, blueberries, and cranberries. Native bees were here long before European honeybees were brought to the country by settlers (honeybees are not native to North America). Honeybees are key to a few crops such as almonds and lemons, but native bees like the blue orchard bees (Osmia) are better and more efficient pollinators of many crops, including those plants that evolved in the Americas. Native bees are estimated to pollinate 80 percent of flowering plants around the world."
Meanwhile, let's take a look at the diversity of bees in these images below, mostly taken in Vacaville, Calif. They come in many shapes, sizes and colors.
What's not to like about a bee?












- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
A good place to learn about them is at the UC Davis Department of Entomology seminar on Wednesday, Feb. 6.
James “Jim” Cane, a research entomologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service’s Biology and Systematics Lab, Utah State University, will speak on “The Spectrum of Managed Nesting for Pollination by Non-Social Bees” from 12:10 to 1 p.m. in Room 1022 of the Life Sciences Addition, corner of Hutchison and Kleiber Hall drives, UC Davis campus.
Host is graduate student Leslie Saul-Gershanz of the Neal Williams lab.
“Most bees nest underground; the remainder largely nesting above-ground, either in beetle holes in deadwood or in pity stems,” Cane says. “The vast majority of bees are non-social, yet only a very few of these species of each nesting habitats are managed for crop pollination. They will be used to illustrate realized and sustained population growth under management, as well as the factors that allow or impede broader use of non-social bees for agriculture.”
“I will then summarize ongoing experience with methods and materials to multiply other native cavity-nesting bees, notably species of Osmia, desired to pollinate tree fruits, bramble fruits and native seed crops, highlighting the costs and challenges that emerge at larger scales of management.”
Cane has spent many of the past 25 years studying the nesting and pollination ecologies of native non-social bees of North America and elsewhere. He has worked with pollination and pollinators of alfalfa, cranberries, blueberries, squashes, almonds, raspberries and a host of native seed crops used for restoration seed. He is currently multiplying three species of Osmia bees for these applications.
For the past 13 years, Cane has worked for the USDA at the Pollinating Insect Research Unit at Utah State University in Logan, Utah. Prior to that, he was on the faculty of Auburn University in Alabama and was a post-doctoral fellow at UC Berkeley. He received his doctorate from the University of Kansas.
The seminar will be videotaped for later posting on UCTV.

- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
During the day, European wool carder bees (so named because the females collect or "card" plant fuzz for their nests) forage on our catmint and lamb's ear.
These bees, Anthidium manicatum, are about the size of a honey bee, but with striking yellow and black markings. From Europe and fairly new to the United States, they became established in New York in 1963, and then began spreading west. Eventually this exotic species made its way to California. Bee scientists first identified it in California (Sunnyvale) in 2007.
"The females nest in convenient cavities such as old beetle holes and hollow stems," according native pollinator specialist Robbin Thorp, emeritus professor entomology at UC Davis. Its plant preferences include lamb’s ear (Stachys byzantine, in the mint family Lamiaceae), a perennial grown for its fuzzy, silvery gray-green foliage.
At night, the females return to their nests. But for the boys, it's the boys' night out.
The "boy bees," as Thorp calls them, "sleep wherever they can."
Every night and early morning, we see a male sleeping inside one of our native bee condos. This particular condo, located several feet above our catmint patch, is drilled with "large" holes to accommodate the blue orchard bee (Osmia), a mason bee. The holes really aren't that large, but they are compared to our bee condo for the smaller leafcutting bees.
For awhile, our mason bee condo drew nothing but earwigs. Not one blue orchard bee (BOB).
Now we have a exotic species sleeping in a native bee condo.
What a treat! At least we have one tenant!
When we took his picture in the early morning, the European wool carder bee didn't budge. Guess he's saving his energy to chase the girls around in the catmint patch.


