The phrase “busy as bee” never rings truer than this time of year.
Our gardens are exploding with blossoms. It seems that everywhere we look we are cheered by bright colors and soothed by pleasant floral scents, all orchestrated by the buzzing of the bees.
While most folks generally call anything that buzzes around flowers and is black and yellow a bee (followed by vigorous swatting), there are many bee and bee-like pollinators, most of which couldn’t be bothered stinging you. Except for the wasp, which is in the same family as bees but significantly more aggressive because it must feed meat to its larvae.
Fun fact: Did you know that honey bees actually are not native to North America or even the Western Hemisphere? They were brought here by European immigrants. Honey bees settled in to the new continent so well that it was quickly forgotten they weren’t from around here.
But instead of pushing out our native bees, of which there are over 4,000 distinct species, honey bees and native pollinators have learned to share and work harder when together.
The most well-known of the native bees are the mason bees, which is named for its nesting habit of building a mud wall between each cell in its nesting tube. Mason bees are one of the easiest native pollinators to recognize and manage in your yard.
They are also significantly more efficient at pollinating than honey bees.
They hatch in the spring just when our fruit trees are blooming and find their way to suitable nesting sites — cavities that tend to be tube-like, think bug holes burrowed into a tree snag. Then, female bees proceed to collect pollen and nectar to build a tiny pillow of food for their egg. This process takes 20-30 trips. A female bee then lays an egg before building a mud wall, which takes about 10-15 trips and requires a ready source of mud.
The mud wall will isolate her egg from the adjoining cells, ensuring each cell a better chance at survival. Each egg in the tube will belong to the same female mason bee. As she fills the tube up and is running out of room, she switches the sex of the eggs she is laying from female to male.
The positioning protects the female eggs from predators. She also leaves a vestibule at the opening of the tube, where there is no egg, that is about the length of a bird beak. This process takes about six to eight weeks. Once she lays her eggs, the female dies.
A baby bee hatches about 10-14 days after the egg is laid. The small larva happily goes about munching on its own bed.
Once the food has been eaten, the larva is ready to pupate and spins itself into a cocoon. This process is usually completed by the end of July or early August.
The final phase results in the mason bee pupa developing into an adult bee inside of the cocoon. The adult mason bee, now living in the cocoon, will stay in the nesting tube throughout the winter until it is time to go to work the following March, when trees are blooming again.
While we know a lot about mason bees, we are just beginning to learn about the many other bee pollinators in our world. In Washington, we have a huge variety; ground nesting, leaf cutter, sweat, cuckoo, plaster and bumble bees (my personal favorite).
Native bees tend to be solitary nesting, except for the bumble bees that live in social nesting sites.
Some may only live a few weeks. Many are only a few millimeters long. For the most part, they are just working hard to gather food for their eggs and aren’t too worried about us, so they can’t be bothered to sting anyone.
Honey bees are the only bees that produce honey. Of the seven to nine recognized honey bee species in the world, only the Western honey bee is found here. Though you will see a huge variety of colors and patterns, they are all the same bee that lives in a hive (or a cavity if feral) and produces honey.
All of our bees are in danger. A loss of habitat, use of pesticides and herbicides and reduction in food sources all contribute to the problem.
How can you help? Educate yourself about pollinators, take a class, stop or severely limit the use of chemicals in your yard, and plant flowers that bloom consecutively so they provide food for all pollinators throughout the year. If possible, plant more native plants in your yard.
For more information on raising mason bees in your yard, visit nwcore.org/pollinator.html and agr.wa.gov/pollinators.
Kelle Rankin-Sunter is founder of Blaine CORE, which holds free home and gardening classes in Blaine. Rankin-Sunter can be reached at fruit@Blaine-CORE.com.
