bees

[hermes2015]

[MarcusA]

The bee's knees! Do bees even have knees?

[MarcusA]

Without bees, the world would be in a terrible state.

[billy rubin]

we're headed there.

[MarcusA]

We're not there yet.

[billy rubin]

depends on what you mean.

commercial honeybees? theyre in trouble and so are the crops they pollinate, to the same extent.

dunno about oz, but native pollinators in america pollinate native plants, not food crpps

[Recusant]

Some native American bees doing well it seems. At least in a graveyard in New York. 

"Scientists Found 5.5 Million Bees Living Beneath a New York Cemetery" | ScienceAlert

Millions of buried creatures burst forth each spring from beneath the soil of a cemetery in Ithaca, New York.

It's not the return of the living dead; it's one of the world's largest aggregations of ground-nesting bees, ravenous for pollen.

Entomologists at Cornell University estimate that East Lawn Cemetery is home to around 5.5 million individual regular miner bees (Andrena regularis), a species that does not live in a colonial hive, as honeybees do, but instead spends most of its life in solitude in underground burrows.

And though A. regularis was already a known inhabitant of the cemetery, with records of the species' presence dating back to 1935, it wasn't until 2021 that the full scale of this nearby bee aggregation became apparent.

Rachel Fordyce, a technician at a Cornell entomology lab, discovered the massive nesting aggregation after finding a sneaky free parking spot a few blocks from campus.

While crossing the cemetery grounds on her way to work one spring day, she was able to capture a jarful of bees to show her colleagues that this site might be worth checking out.

In New York, A. regularis emerges from the ground around April each year to eat pollen, mate, and, for females, to dig brood burrows in which their larvae, well-stocked with pollen and nectar, can spend the winter growing in preparation for next spring's flight.

"This species overwinters as adults, which is relatively rare, and that's part of the reason why they come up out of the ground so early in the spring, timed to the apple bloom," says biologist and the paper's first author Steve Hoge, a Cornell undergraduate student at the time of the research.

The research team began fieldwork in the spring of 2023, setting up 10 emergence traps: tents measuring 36 square centimeters (5.6 square inches), open at the bottom, placed over the bees' nests, which funnel insects into a plastic collection jar, trapping them in 70 percent ethanol.

Each collection jar provided a small snapshot of the ecosystem, from which the entomologists could extrapolate. They collected these emergence samples over 48 days, yielding a total of 3,251 insects from 16 species.

Bee density varied widely between traps, and extrapolations from small datasets are always an imperfect way of gauging population size.

Nonetheless, this field survey suggests the East Lawn Cemetery has an average of 853 A. regularis bees nesting in every square meter (10.8 square feet) of its sandy loam soil.

[Continues . . .]

The paper is open access:

"Emergence dynamics and host-parasite associations in a large aggregation of Andrena regularis (Hymenoptera: Apoidea: Andrenidae)" | Apidologie[/url]

Abstract:

Ground-nesting solitary bees play a vital role in pollination, yet many aspects of their nesting ecology remain understudied, including population dynamics and interactions with brood parasites. We used emergence traps to estimate population size, emergence dynamics, sex ratio, and brood parasitism in a large aggregation of the ground-nesting solitary bee Andrena regularis Malloch at East Lawn Cemetery in Ithaca, NY.

Over the course of the study, conducted from March 30th through May 16th, 2023, we collected 3251 individuals representing 16 species of bees, flies, and beetles, with A. regularis being the dominant species. Using emergence trap capture data over a 41-day emergence period, we document emergence phenology, sex ratio, and parasitism rate for A. regularis and its most abundant brood parasite, Nomada imbricata Smith.

Our results provide insights into the population size, sex ratio, and timing of male and female emergence in a solitary, ground-nesting bee and its brood parasites. Our study demonstrates the effectiveness of emergence traps for studying existing ground-nesting bee populations. This study contributes to our knowledge of bee ecology and emphasizes the potential importance of cemeteries as refugia for ground-nesting bee populations.

[Icarus]

are those bees dangerous if disturbed?

[Recusant]

I was curious about that too. The females of the ground nesting bees do sting but according to what I found, it's not a particularly painful sting. As for aggressiveness, I've never been stung by one as far as I know, and I've spent most of my life outdoors. Been stung by other flying beasties a fair number of times--mostly yellowjackets I'd say. Very similar to the European common wasp, but a different species.

Ground nesting bees might sting if their burrow is stomped on, but you won't get a swarm of them because there's only one bee per burrow. Still, if allergic to stings it doesn't matter whether it's a painful sting or not. Males don't sting but might appear aggressive.

They're generally beneficial as far as humans are concerned. They pollinate of course, but they also aerate the soil.

I checked a few different sources for the above. Here's one of them.

[Icarus]

I have never encountered a miner bee as far as I know. Perhaps they do not thrive in Florida.

I do have a burrowing insect called Rinoceros beetle. They are large burrowing critters that true to their name, have a long horn protruding from their head.  They are harmless except for the holes they dig in the ground. The holes are usually about an inch in diameter and go down only a few inches. I ignore them and they eventually go away or hibernate or whatever it is that they do.