Plan Now for Spring Pollinators

Native Bee Spotlight: Green Sweat Bees ~ Agapostemon spp.

Green Sweat Bees (Metallic Green Bees) ~ Agapostemon spp.

Green Sweat Bees are one of the most brightly colored native bees in our area. A bright emerald green head and thorax, with a striped abdomen of pale to bright yellow. Some females in this genus are entirely green, and often difficult to distinguish from bees in the Augochlora genus.

We see Green Sweat Bees in late May, some of the first females visit Ohio Spiderwort (Tradescantia ohiensis) to collect and feed on pollen. No nectar is offered by this native. Read about other visitors to Spiderwort here.

Green Sweat Bees nest in the ground, building long vertical nest cavities. Most are solitary nesting like the majority of native bees, but some species share the same nest entrance but build their own cavities.

Another good source of pollen for Green Sweat Bee females in early spring is Great St. John's Wort (Hypericum pyramidatum).

Green Sweat Bees are short tongued, so they visit shallow or easily accessible flowers for nectar. They like to visit both the prairie native Hoary Vervain (Verbena stricta), found in dry, sunny locales as well as the wetland native Blue Vervain, Verbena hastata for nectar.

Visiting Blue Vervain for nectar.

Look for Green Sweat Bees on Coneflower (Echinacea) species. Females collected pollen and feed on nectar on our Pale Purple Coneflower.

They will investigate the flowers of Wild Bergamot, possibly feeding on pollen but cannot reach the nectar in the long flower tubes.

Culver's Root (Veronicastrum virginicum) is a late summer favorite of Green Sweat Bees. The numerous shallow white tubular flowers provide an abundance of nectar.

Look for Green Sweat Bees in late summer on Cup Plant (Silphium perfoliatum) as well as many of the fall flowering Asters.

These native bees are fast moving and camera shy. It's often difficult to capture them because their flower visits are very short, so have your camera ready if you spot one.






References:
Attracting Native Pollinators: The Xerces Society Guide, Protecting North America's Bees and Butterflies


Wafer Ash Insect Visitors

Wafer Ash ~ Ptelea trifoliata

Our small Wafer Ash flowered this year and I was surprised at how fragrant the flowers were. And it's no surprise that the fragrance attracted many types of pollen and nectar seeking insects.

The tiny four or five parted flowers are arranged in loose cluster about two inches in width.

Read an earlier post about Wafer Ash.

Muscid flies were enjoying the flower offerings, who knew that they have a taste for sweet smelling things too?

And Syrpid flies also were frequent visitors.

Tiny Sweat Bees (Lasioglossum species) were busy collecting pollen and nectar. It was no surprise that two types of Cuckoo Bees, both cleptoparasites were nectaring on the flowers too.

Here a Nomada species with its rusty brown coloration and yellow spots on its back. I featured this Cuckoo Bee in an earlier post this spring titled It's a Bee Eat Bee World.

Cleptoparasitic bees don't fashion their own nests but instead lay their eggs in nests of other ground dwelling bee species.

This Sphecodes species was a new sighting for me, very distinctive with its bright red body. It was also enjoying the nectar offered from the Wafer Ash. Neither of these Cuckoo Bees forage for pollen because they're not building their own nests.

What's fascinating about the Sphecodes bee, is that is belongs to the insect Family Halictidae (Sweat Bees) not the cleptoparasitic subfamily of Nomadinae (Cuckoo Bees).

The Sphecodes are parasites of the Sweat Bees, the same family in which they belong. Depending upon their social relationship to the host species, they can be cleptoparasites or just social parasites.

Cleptoparasites - Seek and Destroy
"A female of the solitary Sphecodes enters the nests of other solitary bees to lay an egg while the host female is away foraging. Once in the nest, although most other cleptoparasites do not harm the host's egg, a female Sphecodes destroys the host's egg before laying her own." (Attracting Native Pollinators)

Social Parasites - Coup d'Etat
If they're social parasites, they "enter the nest and in some way replace the queen, so that the host workers then tend and rear Sphecodes offspring." (Attracting Native Pollinators)