Is He Stuck or Just Sleeping?
I found this tiny bee who looked to be stuck to a thorn on my Bois D’Arc tree this afternoon. At first glance, I thought perhaps a March fly, and a dead one at that, but it turned out this is a most likely a “he” Nomad bee, and he wasn’t stuck at all, but just sleeping.
I learned something new today about bees that I did not know. My friend, Eric Eaton’s wife (link to Eric’s book about wasps in my Read More section) , shared with me that some bees will often sleep in this manner, attached to a substrate like this thorn or a twig, by their mandibles. Thanks Heidi! 🙂
My bee was definitely gripping the end of the thorn with its mandibles. Before I found out my bee was only napping, I wasn’t certain what was going on. I worried maybe the bee had fallen victim to some weird fungus and was now locked in a death vise. Worries unfounded! The little bee released his grip as I was about to clip the end of the twig (with bee attached) and take it into the house to view under the microscope.
Nomad bees are pretty cool. They are cuckoo bees, cleptoparasites of other bees (usually Andrena bees or Melitta bees) and target the nest provisions gathered by the host bees for their own young. Nomad bees will find the nests of host bees using olfactory and visual cues. The fertilized female will lay her eggs in these nests, where her offspring will develop after devouring the offspring of the host bee, and eating the food the host parent had provisioned.
Check out the video footage of this little bee as he woke up this afternoon and read more about Nomad bees in the attached links in my Read More section.
Read More About Nomad Bees Here
- Bugguide.net – Nomada https://bugguide.net/node/view/5211
- Alexander, B. A. 1994. Species-groups and cladistic analysis of the cleptoparasitic bee genus Nomada (Hymenoptera: Apoidea). University of Kansas Science Bulletin 55: 175-238. (Full Text)
- Eaton, Eric. 2021. Wasps: The Astonishing Diversity of a Misunderstood Insect. Princeton University Press. https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691211428/wasps
- Rankin, C. 2021. Introducing the Nomad Bees. Natural History Society of Northumbria. https://www.nhsn.org.uk/nomad-bees/
Thanks for reading!
Cynthia Brast is an independent entomologist living on San Juan Island. Check out her YouTube Channel, Bugging You From San Juan Island to see more amazing 6 and 8-legged creatures found in the San Juans. https://www.youtube.com/user/buggingyoufromsji/featured
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