Black Bee
Black bees (mason bee) overwinter as adults, in vacant nest tunnels. In spring, when it begins to warm up, the adults emerge and mate, then the males die and the females begin working on new tunnels or enlarging tunnels from previous years. She will construct brood cells, load them with food, and then lays an egg in each cell. Read More….
Digger Bee
One interesting group of native ones is the digger bee or ground-nesting bee. These build nests in the ground, solitary nests. They will lay their eggs and raise their young in these soil tunnels. The sites in any given area that are optimal for these nests are limited and sometimes, hundreds of them will nest in the same spot, This gives it a look like it’s a colony, but it is not, each bee has its own nest. Read More….
Honey Bee
Honey Bees are social insects that live in colonies. The hive population consists of 1 queen, a few drones plus thousands of worker bees. The honeybees forage for nectar and pollen from flowering plants. They use the nectar they collect for food for themselves and to feed the young bees in the nest. Read More….
Leaf Cutter Cuckoo Bee
The Megachilidae family of bees is pretty big, they can be found throughout the world. The family consists of 1100 species worldwide with more than 200 bees in the Pacific Northwest alone. They are solitary bees and nest alone, each of the females builds their own nest, some do this in areas where they will have no neighbours while others like to nest in groups, and some will even share entrances. Read More….
Red-Tailed Bumblebee
The female Red-Tailed Bumblebee is a large, black bumblebee with a red butt patch. Males are smaller than females and along with the red tail, have two yellow bands on the thorax and one at the base of the abdomen. Read More….
The worker bee is always a female, and they do almost everything for the hive. From her birth to her death 45 days later, the worker bee is responsible for everything, feeding the larvae, tending to the queen, cleaning the hive, collecting food, guarding the colony, and building honeycomb. The male bee is a drone and its only job is to mate with queens from other hives. After mating, they die. If they do not mate, they can live up to 90 days. You can tell which bee is a drone by its bigger body and large eyes.
There is one queen bee per hive, and she is the mom of all the others. She can lay about 1,500 eggs a day during spring and summer. They are distinguished from the other members of the hive by their long abdomens and small wings. Soon after birth, the queen will go out and mate with as many drones as they can, then they return to the hive and will not leave again.
When the colony needs a new queen bee, the worker bees will choose a healthy larva and feed it royal jelly, Royal jelly is produced in the heads of all the young workers, and it helps this larva grow into a queen. Queens can live from 4 to 7 years.
There are other types of bees that are just as important to fertilization as the honey bee, there are the black bee, the bumblebee and the mason bee All listed here can be used by the home farmer to help in pollination.
We appear to have a colony of wild bees that we feel are very hungry. They were hovering around our Hummingbird feeder. We built a wooden platform that we drilled holes into and filled with unpasturized natural honey. We are not sure that we are doing it right, but we have over 30 or 40 bees on the platform at any given time.
Hello, I live in the Port Hardy area of North Vancouver Island, I have noticed less Bees than normal years in my yard, I would like to help out by building a Bee hotel, could you offer some helpful suggestions, for example what type of Bees should I help along and what type of a Bee hotel should I build, do the size of holes, and how many?
drill 1/2 inch holes in a block of wood and put out where bees can find it. once its full move it into a non heated shed and keep there till spring, bring it out early spring