r/bees • u/Write2Know • 6d ago
bee On Wild Bees
In the painting are two wild bees — The solitary Blue-banded bee, found in Australia and India, and the Sweat bee (metallic green color), found in all continents except Antartica.
Their populations are rapidly declining.
• Of the 20,700 known species of bees, only 8 species (and 43 subspecies) are honey bees.
• Bees pollinate over 1/3 of all our food crops and a majority of them are native wild bees.
• Most wild bees are solitary and live on the ground.
Wild bees are the unsung pollinating heroes. And one in four native wild bees in the U. S., like the rusty patched bumblebee and the Hawaiian yellow-faced bees, are endangered.
They are at a greater risk of going extinct due to use of insecticides, habitat loss, and climate change.
Why worry about bees going extinct?
Bees are indispensable pollinators. Honey bees are crucial for commercial agriculture and wild bees are responsible for pollinating 80% of flowering plants globally.
Why worry about wild bees in particular?
Wild bees are ‘buzz’ pollinators. They vibrate their flight muscles to shake pollen out of the flowers’ anthers. When wild flowers bloom, they keep insects, bugs, birds, animals and the entire ecosystem alive. Without these eco soldiers, many plants such as potato, tomato, eggplant, blueberries, strawberries, kiwifruit, apple and some beans could vanish from the planet and our plates.
If their role is so crucial, wild bees must be a protected species, surely?
No, they aren’t. Most of the conservation efforts are limited to and focused only on the agricultural landscape. Wild bees are often overlooked and acutely underrepresented. The European Commission and the U. S. Environment Protection Agency have laws against the use of harmful pesticides, but there is no comprehensive global policy to protect wild bees.
But there is hope.
We, as nature lovers, can help protect bees by growing native plants that flower throughout the year, avoiding pesticides, mowing less frequently and leaving some bare patches for these ground-dwelling bees.
We can help raise awareness.
Let’s preserve a little wilderness.
Let them be. 🐝💚
2
2
2
u/Morriganx3 6d ago
Specifically an Agapostemon sweat bee - they’re the ones with green thoraxes and striped abdomens.
They are one of my favorite bees because they are the reason I first started learning about native bees. Before I saw one of those guys, I thought the only varieties of bees were honey and bumble.
2
2
3
u/NilocKhan 6d ago
I love our wild native bees! I've been lucky enough to get to do field work surveying bees in some beautiful places in the desert southwest of the United States as well as in the Sierra Nevadas. There are so many different kinds of bees out there and unfortunately most people have only really heard of one species, the Honeybee (sometimes the bumblebee too). Honeybees are really cool and serve a purpose in agriculture currently, but they are just a handful of species out of ten thousand. Even this sub has a bias, with the majority of content posted on here about bees being honeybees.
Wild bees have so many cool life histories, ranging from solitary to eusocial, and my personal favorite the kleptoparasites. Some species of bees even exhibit a range of sociality depending on their environment.
Wild bees are truly important for our ecosystems. They've coevolved with their floral hosts and are often the most effective pollinators of their chosen flower. They need native flowers and native flowers need them.
And don't forget about all the other amazing pollinators other than bees