I'll bet you thought bees is bees and that all bees make honey. That's what I was thinking, partly because of Pooh Bear and his honey tree out in the woods. But no, there are honey bees, which most of us are familiar with, and then there are the native bees.

One species of native bee:


Most people assume that when you talk about bees, you are talking about honey bees, the ones that sting you. Honey bees were brought to the United States by immigrants travelling from Europe and Asia. The species has been domesticated for centuries. Honey bees gather pollen to make honey.

But there are hundreds and hundreds of native bees in our landscapes that serve the important function of pollinating plants. They don't make honey, and some of them live in the ground. Native bees use collected pollen as a food source for their larvae, turning the pollen into the next generation of bees. Some of the native bees are even stingless, so that's another re-think for many people. All they do is pollinate, and without pollinators we wouldn't have our native plants.

My personal experience with native bees beyond seeing many different kinds visiting the wildflowers, was a few years ago when a bear dug up one of their hives in our yard. There was a big hole, about a foot across and a foot deep, with claw marks in the dirt on the edges. The dead bees were scattered all around, but most remarkable, there was no honey. I thought all bees make honey, so was puzzled by it, and had figured the bear was motivated to dig there by the smell of honey. Now I think the bear could have been after the bee larvae in the hive.



As for honey bees gone wild, we had an old farm house rental where the tenants kept complaining about the bees living inside the walls. When we tore it down, there were all the honey combs. I tried to get some local bee keepers to come get these bees, but they weren't interested.