Why Don't Ground Bees Sting?

Honey bees are the type of bee most of us are familiar with, but most of the world's bees don't live and behave in the same ways. Learn about ground bees in this episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://animals.howstuffworks.com/insects/ground-nesting-bees.htm

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hey
brain Stuff, Lauren Vogelbaum. Here, you think you know what
bees are all about. They make honey and live in
hives with a queen, and if you agitate them, they
might sting you. Right. Well, this is all true about
some bees, but just as there are lots of different

(00:23):
kinds of rodents, big ones and small ones, species that
live in trees, and species that live underground, some that
love to nest together, and others that just want to
be left alone. Earth is home to approximately twenty thousand
species of bees, and they're all a little different. Bees
are our most important pollinators, and a lot of places

(00:45):
in the world are home to you social bees like
the ubiquitous western honey bee, which was probably originally native
to Asia, but over the centuries has spread to every
continent except Antarctica. Industrial agriculture spends millions of dollars or
is every year renting hives to pollinate crops to increase yield.
Honey Bees live in hives with a queen that's in

(01:08):
charge of procreation within the colony, but most bees on
the planet are not honey bees. In fact, there are
only a handful of honey bee species in the world. However,
every continent has its own native bees, from the Arctic
to deserts, tropical forests, grasslands, and most places in between.
In North America, there are around four thousand native bee species,

(01:30):
with new species being discovered all the time, and perhaps surprisingly,
most bees are solitary, meaning that each mother bee provides
for her own nest, and about sevent of native bees
live in the ground. For the article, this episode is
based on how Stuff Works. Spoke with Clay Bolt, a
natural history and conservation photographer specializing in native bees. He

(01:54):
said you could think of solitary bees as hard working
single moms working non stop from set up to sundown
to provide pollen and nectar in the form of little
loaves that they provide for their young. Ground nesting bees
can prefer a variety of different ground types, but most
often they nest in dry, hard packed soil, similar to

(02:15):
places where you might see an ant's nest. Bolts said
they will often be seen along the sides of paths
or bare patches of soil that most people take for granted.
They can also nest beneath leaves, an important reminder of
why homeowners should leave a patch of leaves in their
yard or in rotting wood. Most don't destroy wood or
excavate cavities in wood, but rather use pre existing insect burrows.

(02:40):
A solitary bee nest will be a tube about six
inches or fifteen centimeters long, excavated in dry soil by
a female bee. And there are many challenges that come
from nesting in the ground. Predators, moisture and flooding, intense heat,
the challenges of overwintering nest, disturbance by people, vehicles and
other large animals, and pesticides, just to name a few.

(03:04):
To deal with the natural threats that ground nesting bees face,
they've developed many strategies to protect their young. Bees will
line their nests with things like hard packed soil, bits
of cut leaves, and masticated flower petals. One genus of
ground nesting bee is known as cellophane bees for the clear,
waterproof stuff they paint onto the walls of their nests.

(03:25):
Whatever the material, nest linings keep the young sufficiently dry
and retain the integrity of the nest. Because most of
us associate bees with a honey bees propensity to sting,
we often try to get rid of bees or yellow jackets,
which are actually a type of wasp when we find
them in our yards and around our houses. However, ground

(03:46):
nesting bees aren't dangerous. Many solitary bees are very tiny,
smaller than a grain of rice, and therefore too small
to sting. Even if they are able to sting, their
venom is too weak to do much damage. Bolts said,
solitary bees rarely sting. The most aggressive of all bees
are honey bees, because they have a hive to defend.

(04:08):
Solitary bees, on the other hand, have everything to lose
if they sting someone or something and get killed in
the process. If the mother dies before the young has
been provisioned, then her lineage ends and the bees most
commonly seen circling around solitary bee nests are most likely males,
which actually can't sting. We should note that no male

(04:28):
bees can sting. A stinger is a modified egg laying
apparatus that's only found in female bees. It's difficult to
be a solitary bee in a world full of manicured lawns.
Homeowners often view these ground nesters as a nuisance and
use pesticides to get rid of them, But killing these
pollinators with pesticides is dangerous for their populations, which are

(04:51):
already dwindling. It's important to note that solitary bees are
not much of a threat to lawns and turf. You
can continue you to mow your lawn, play and picnic
as usual right next to the bees, but if there
are many nests in an area, you might want to
avoid that spot for one or two months while the
bees are nesting. If you must dissuade the bees from nesting,

(05:12):
we don't use a pesticide. Heavy watering can encourage them
to pack up and pick another spot. Today's episode is
based on the article ground nesting bees are solitary and
often stingless on how stuff works dot Com, written by
Jescelin Shields. Brain Stuff is production off i Heart Radio
in partnership with how stuff works dot Com, and it

(05:34):
is produced by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts on my
heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.