The Beauty of Orchard Bees
There are over 20,000 species of bees in the world and while they’re all fascinating, this one creates stunning purple jewels for its offspring to eat.
Let’s meet the blue orchard bee, a little creature helping make it possible for us to eat almonds and other fruit!
The nests that the blue orchard bees create look like a piece of jewelry. And we’re lucky enough that Deep Look has created a wonderful video all about how the females go about making these beautiful homes for their young!
(Don’t miss taking a peek over at the Deep Look’s YouTube channel some time. It is a place of wonder that can transform your view of the world around us! They get really, really close!)
The producer of the episode with a little more information for us…
Producer, Gabriela Quiros, responded in the comments of the video with some fascinating information on how the bees actually get out of the tube nest once they’re mature and how the sex of the bees is determined by the mother! Take a look.
“A few of you have asked how adult blue orchard bees get out of the nest. Jim Cane, a native bee ecologist at the US Department of Agriculture, explained that adults chew their way out of their tough cocoon and then keep on chewing to pass through the mud partitions and ultimately the mud closure of the nest. Like all bees, the female blue orchard bee gets to choose the sex of each offspring – fertilized eggs become females; unfertilized eggs become males. She puts female eggs at the back of the nest and males at the front. Most females mate only once, so males that are late to the game will have fewer offspring. That’s why adult males of all solitary bees emerge a few days to a week before the females. An emerged bee will be patient and wait for a few days for the next in line to exit. If its sibling doesn’t emerge because it has died, the bee will eat through its sibling’s cocoon and keep going. Thanks for your questions!”
Fascinating stuff, right? It’s not every species that can bring offspring into the world without fertilization.
Are you interested in the other 19,999 species of bees in the world?
While we don’t have information on all of them here on EWC, we have featured a few that have really caught our attention.
For starters, this orchid bee, whose also solitary, uses a carefully concocted type of “perfume” in their legs to attract mates. Check them out in this article:
