When we talk about bees, the first one that typically comes to mind is the European Honeybee. You may not know them by that name, but they are the type of bees most beekeepers are keeping in bee hives.

One thing to remember is that bees are part of the order Hymenoptera along with ants, hornets, and wasps. Overall, there are about 20,000 species of bees, with Oklahoma playing host to 4000 different types. Yes, that’s 4000 different types of bees in Oklahoma. So, the next time you see a bee in the yard, it might be a European honey bee or one of the other 3999 types who live among us.

One distinction to know when discussing bees is there are social bees and solitary bees. The European honey bee is a social bee, preferring to live in colonies. Well managed European honey bee hives can have 60,000 to even 80,000 bees in what are called colonies. However only about 5% of the bees are considered social with the other 95% preferring to live their lives as solitary bees. Let’s talk about a few of our common bees.

European Honey Bees

As the name implies, these bees are not native to North America. In the early 1600, early settlers, apparently knowing the importance of pollinating insects to their crops (or maybe they just liked honey) brought bee colonies with them. Today European honey bees are responsible for pollinating 120 cultivated crops with an approximate market value of over $20 billion annually. Many of these crops are pollinated by bees that are rented and shipped to various locations. You may remember a few years ago, one of these semis carrying a load of bees crashed on I-35 causing quite a problem for a while. There are several interesting videos on YouTube of police cars almost covered with bees.

While European honey bees do much of the heavy lifting for commercial crops, native bees are the pollinating mainstay of our home gardens.

Bumble Bees

When I mention bumble bees, most of us can conjure up an image of a bumble bee with its distinctive black and yellow abdomens. While bumble bees are social to some degree, preferring to live in underground colonies much smaller that the colonies of the European honey bee. Bumble bee colonies usually only contain several hundred bees rather than the thousands of the European honey bee. While flowers are their main food source and they do make honey, they do not produce honey in large quantities like the European honey bee. Even though bumble bees overwinter in the tunnel, the queens are the only ones who survive to start a new colony in the spring.

Carpenter Bees

Carpenter bees, which sounds much more distinguished that their other name of wood bees, get their name because of the way they bore their way into wood to make homes for their young. These bees look somewhat similar to bumble bees because of their black and yellow coloring; however the abdomens of bumble bees are yellow and hairy while the abdomen’s of carpenter bees are black and shiny. You can distinguish between male and female carpenter bees by looking at their faces. Females have a black face while the males have a yellow face. While carpenter bees can bore into the wood on our homes, they prefer unpainted wood, so keeping your home painted will act as a deterrent.

Sweat Bees

Sweat bees are often confused with European honey bees due to their appearance but they are another one of the native bees we find here in Oklahoma. They get their name because they are attracted to our perspiration due to its salt and moisture levels. For the most part they don’t sting, but we will still try to swat them away while working in the garden.

Sweat bees make their homes underground as the females dig burrows in which to lay their eggs. During the summer, adult sweat bees feed on nectar and pollen, bringing the pollen home to their underground burrows while serving as pollinators. The female lays their eggs in the tunnels she has previously stocked with food. Their young overwinter in these underground burrows as larvae or sometimes as pupae and then emerge in the spring.

Mason Bees

For my money, mason bees have the most interesting life cycle. Their nesting sites range from hollow stems to crevices. The female mason bees go deep into the stem or crevice to begin laying her eggs. Each egg gets its own space in which she has left food with each egg being separated from the other by a partition she constructs. She repeats this process until reaching the opening of the stem or crevice.

While the egg laying process begins at the back of the hole, the hatching and emerging process begins with the one closest to the entry point. In addition, the ones at the back of the hole tend to be the females while the ones closer to the opening tend to be the males. After emerging, the males wait near the opening of the nest for the females to emerge. Guys are so predictable.

Since mason bees have this unique nesting strategy, it can be fun to build a mason bee nesting site or buy one from a commercial source. And since mason bees are one of the more active bees in the garden, having a local source of mason bee pollinators would be a good thing. We have information on what these mason bee homes look like on our website. Just click on the Lawn and Garden Help section and then click on Insects. See you in the garden!

You can get answers to all your gardening questions by calling the Tulsa Master Gardeners Help Line at 918-746-3701, dropping by our Diagnostic Center at 4116 E. 15th Street, or by emailing us at mg@tulsamastergardeners.org. Photo: OSU Ag. Comm.