Many of us spent the Thanksgiving break eating  turkey, and some bees are just like us! Well, sort of. Vulture bees, in the genus Trigona, are carnivorous! They may not be feasting on turkey, but Trigona spp. do eat animal carcasses. While many bees get their protein from pollen, vulture bees are special in that they are able to use raw meat as their protein source.

How do Trigona spp. consume carrion? Scientists have discovered that the microbiome of vulture bees’ digestive system is fundamentally different from bumble bees, honey bees, and stingless bees. Trigona spp. have lots of Lactobacillus bacteria in their digestive system, which UC Riverside researchers Doug Yanega and Jessica Maccaro hypothesize create an acidic environment that kills pathogens on the carrion. This allows vulture bees to eat meat without the fear of infection. Other adaptations include specialized teeth to cut through meat and less hairy legs because the bees do not collect pollen. 

Source: Elizabeth Gamillo/Smithsonian Magazine

 Did you know that bees hate squashes? Most honey bees and bumblebees will avoid the pollen from plants in the genus Cucurbita, which includes pumpkins, zucchini, and other gourds and squashes. In fact, bees have been observed actively removing squash pollen from them if they accidentally get it on themselves!

But there is a special group of bees that actually love squash pollen. Squash bees, bees in the genera Peponapis and Xenoglossa, are specialists. This means that they gather resources from only specific plants (in contrast to generalists like Western Honey Bees). Squash bees are solitary and make their nests in the ground, digging a tunnel about a foot deep.

One specific squash bee, the Eastern Cucurbit Bee (Peponapis pruinosa), has experienced significant success in recent years. It has always had plenty of food, as its primary food source, the wild buffalo gourd was part of the “Three Sisters” agriculture system that dominated the American Southwest for millenia. Over time, P. pruinosa followed along as squash spread throughout North America. A recent study shows that P. pruinosa’s population has been growing for the past 1,000 years as squash agriculture has developed. However, their increasing access to food may have also led to decreased genetic diversity amongst the bees as domesticated plants themselves are less diverse. 

Sources: Jim Cane/USFS/USDA and Sara LeJeunesse/Penn State

Euglossa cordata is a kind of orchid bee found in South America. Like many of the bees found in the Euglossa genus, it has a bright, metallic coloration. Euglossa is one genus belonging to the tribe Euglossini, which is in the Apinae subfamily (which also includes Apis, the honey bee tribe). The English name of the Euglossini tribe, orchid bees, stems from their attraction to orchids.

E. cordata bees pollinate a wide variety of orchids, and have evolved shorter probosces than some other Euglossine bees to gather nectar from shorter flowers. Orchid subtribes and species have a diverse array of strategies to disperse their pollen, including trapping the bee and forcing it to rub against the plant, which deposits a mass of pollen on them.  

While many orchid bees are solitary, E. cordata is primitively eusocial. This means that unlike the large colonies found in honey bees, E. cordata colonies are very small–generally only several female bees in one nest ruled by a dominance hierarchy. The dominant female (who may also be the mother of the other female bees) maintains her position through aggression. All the female bees are capable of egg-laying, and dominant females sometimes replace or eat other bees’ eggs (possibly their grandchildren) to hinder subordinate females’ efforts.

Source: Wikipedia

The Zephyr Sweat Bee (Lassioglossum zephyrus) is a type of sweat bee, which means it is in the family Halictidae. Sweat bees are named this because they are often attracted to sweat! L. zephyrus can be found burrowing in their ground nests throughout the United States and Canada, including here in Rochester.

Unlike the honey bees we keep on campus, the Zephyr Sweat Bee has a much more variable and unusual social system. L. zephyrus can be solitary, or live in nests of up to about 20 bees. Roles in the nest are not determined primarily by age, but by dominance. Queens will force workers deeper into burrows to stunt workers’ development. Bees higher up in the chain of dominance will have more developed ovaries. 

Male Zephyr Sweat Bees do not stay in the nests, but leave early on to mate and forage. They are not always accurate, and have been found possibly trying to mate with pebbles and other species of bees! 

Sources: Wikipedia/DiscoverLife.org

In 2016, scientists named a new bee species that had been documented over forty years ago. Anthrophora pueblo, named after the Puebloan people of the Four Corners region. Like the Puebloans, A. pueblo carves its nests into the sandstone walls of cliffs and Pueblo structures!

Only about ½ an inch long (10 to 15 millimeters), this bee uses its strong mandibles and water to create tunnels in which to nest. The team found that A. pueblo will live in and expand tunnels from past bees, leading to thousands of tunnels made by generations of bees! Because the nest tunnels are durable, A. pueblo bees have plenty of protection from beetles, predators, pathogens, and floods. The durability also means that younger bees can stay in the safety of the tunnels for a few years, waiting for peak flower blooms.

The bees were primarily described by Michael Orr, then a graduate student at Utah State University. Orr worked alongside Federal researcher Frank Parker, who collected the older specimens forty years prior, as well as mentors James Pitts and Terry Griswold. You can read the original paper and Orr’s other works here! 

Sources: USDA/ARS/Jan Suszkiw

The Eastern Yellowjacket (Vespula maculifrons) is one of the several yellowjacket species that live in the Northeast. Despite their similar color schemes, yellow jackets are not bees but actually a kind of predatory wasp.

Eastern yellowjackets are social wasps, and colonies have a queen, female workers, and males. Unlike bees, only eastern yellowjacket queens survive the winter. In the fall, the queen will mate with males and then find a shelter to hibernate in. In the spring, she will emerge and begin to lay eggs and create a nest. Queens can produce about 25,000 wasps a year and colonies can have up to 5,000 individuals at once! When fall comes, they will begin to die off and the queen begins the process all over again.

While our honey bees on campus use wax and propolis (bee glue) to build out the hives, eastern yellowjackets use wood and plant fibers, cocoon silk, paper, and other fibrous materials to build their nests. Adult yellowjackets are herbivorous like honey bees and feed on nectar and juice. Yellowjacket larvae, however, eat animal tissue (bugs and meat). To get larvae to eat, workers actually tickle the larvae and then feed them a paste made of chewed up tissue.

Happy April Fools :)

Sources: Sara Diamond/Heather Yoder/AnimalDiversity.org

The white-tailed bumble bee (Bombus lucorum), is one of the earliest bees to emerge in the spring! Found across the British Isles, this bee can leave the hive for spring as early as February, but generally become active again in March. They are named for their distinctive white rears. 

White-tailed bumble bees have short tongues, which they use to “rob nectar”. Instead of climbing into the flower to get nectar, they drill holes in the sides of flowers and extract the nectar. When they do this, they do not come into contact with any pollen.

B. lucorum bees are easily confused with Bombus terrestris, which has a slightly creamier-colored tail. There are also subspecies of Bombus lucorum with off-white tails, which makes differentiation even harder! Thankfully, better DNA testing capability has allowed scientists to get a clearer picture of the two species.

Sources: BuzzAboutBees.net/NBN Atlas

Bombus hyperboreus is another bumble bee which lives far north in the Arctic Circle. However, it operates a little differently than the Arctic Bumblebee (Bombus polaris)–it is a brood parasite! Instead of establishing their own colonies, B. hyperboreus queens kill other bumble bee queens and take over their colonies.

B. hyperboreus queens typically target Arctic Bumblebee colonies. Once she’s killed the Arctic Bumblebee queen, the B. hyperboreus queen will begin producing drones and other queens. This species does not produce workers, so queens rely on enslaving the worker bees of the colonies they have taken over.

However, B. hyperboreus bees do not just depend on the hives they’ve taken over. Although they are parasitic bumble bees, they are unique in that they still collect pollen and nectar.

Source: iNaturalist

What do you think of when you think of honey bees? Most people are familiar with a species known as the western or European honey bee–that’s the kind we keep here at RIT! But did you know that there are actually several other species of honey bee?

One other honey bee species is known as the eastern or Asian honey bee (Apis cerana). Their native range extends throughout South, Southeast, and East Asia. While Asian honey bees behave quite similarly to European honey bees, there are a few key differences between them. Asian honey bees usually have smaller colonies and like to nest in smaller cavities. Asian honey bees also have an extra stripe on their abdomens (four instead of three)!

Asian honey bees are used throughout Asia to produce honey, wax, and other products. They are popular among beekeepers in their native range because they are well-adapted to the environment and its pests and predators. Because Asian honey bees don’t require as many treatments to avoid parasites and pests, they can produce organic honey!

May 29th, 2022

This queen cell was stung in the side by a newly emerged queen to prevent any of her potential rivals from emerging! This is common in hives preparing to swarm or supersede where there are many queen cells in the hive

Swarms: A few days before the queen cells emerge, the old queen will leave with about half of the hive so that there is only ever one queen in the hive. After the first virgin queen emerges, she stings the other queen cells, and then goes on her mating flight where she’ll mate with anywhere from 5-19 drones, and come back to the hive to lay her eggs

Supersedure: If a preexisting queen is getting too old, can’t lay any more fertilized eggs, or is too weak to make it through winter, the hive will prepare a few queen cells to take over. After the virgin emerges, she stings the other cells, and goes on her mating flight. Afterwards, she comes back to the hive (there’s some debate of what happens next). Beekeepers postulate that the old queen stops giving off the right pheromones so the workers stop feeding her, or that she just gets kicked out of the hive when the new queen comes back mated and ready to lay eggs. 

May 19th, 2022

If you’ve ever wondered what honey bee eggs look like, here they are! Usually they’re difficult to see on cloudy days, these photos were taken on a sunny day with just the right lighting. 

Why do we care about these? This shows us that there’s a mated queen actively laying in the hive. Brood can be capped around 9 days after being laid, which isn’t a good indicator of whether or not a queen is actually in the hive. With looking for eggs, the hive inspection can be a little shorter and reduce the risk of killing the queen in the hive.

What if there are multiple eggs in one cell? That means you’re dealing with laying workers, something you really want to avoid. When a hive has been queenless for too long, the worker bees’ ovaries are activated so they can lay eggs too (normally suppressed by the presence of uncapped brood). Workers can only lay drones, so this isn’t sustainable for the hive.

How many eggs does a queen lay in a day? She will lay anywhere from 2,000-3,000 eggs in a day! To give some context, each deep frame (both sides) can support 7,000 eggs. 

April 10th, 2021

The queen is the only bee in the hive that can reproduce (sustainably at least) and she is responsible for all reproduction in the colony. They are only fed royal jelly during their development which is why their reproductive organs are fully developed.  A strong queen can live for up to 3 years.  They have longer bodies than workers and typically are more constant in color (don't have the stripes).  Beekeepers sometimes mark the queen's body with a bee-safe marker to make identification easier.

Worker bees are the female bees in the colony and are responsible for all upkeep of the hive, feeding the queen, guarding the hive against predators, making and storing honey, feeding eggs and larvae, and gathering nectar and pollen.  They are grown from a fertilized egg and have two sets of chromosomes, making them diploid.  Worker bee jobs are loosely based on their age; nurse bees are typically younger, and forager bees are typically older, more experienced bees.  They typically live for about 6 weeks, but can live up to 5 months in the winter

Finally, all male bees in the colony are drone bees.  They are characterized by their large eyes and slightly larger, more fuzzy bodies compared to workers.  They do not contribute anything to the colony and their only responsibility is to mate with a virgin queen from another hive on her mating flight.  They are grown from an unfertilized egg and have only one set of chromosomes, making them haploid.