Bees With Spots

Bees

• There are two main types of bees, stinging and stingless. Sweat bees are stingless bees. The hiving bees, like the European honeybee and sweat bees, have very large families led by a single queen and all the workers are sisters. Solitary bees, like the carpenter and mason bees, have a long nose, or proboscis, designed for getting nectar from flowers. Flowering plants and bees have long had a close evolutionary association and many plants cannot bear fruit without pollination by bees. Bees carry pollen on the backs of their heads, on their legs and sometimes on their backs.

Yellow and Black

• Most stinging bees are yellow and black and have a dominant striping along their abdomen. On occasion, creamy white replaces the yellow color. The reason stinging bees all keep the same bright color pattern is that it gives a warning to predators that they are dangerous. Once bees sting, they die, unlike wasps. This is because the bee's abdomen tears when it leaves its stinger in you. The bee would rather warn you off then sacrifice itself. All of the stinging bees having the same warning patterns and colors reduces the number of deaths of each type of bee. In fact, the coloration is so good at warning off predators that other insects, like some flies, imitate bee coloration.

Blue and Green Metallic

• Not all bees are black and yellow. The stingless sweat bee is a shiny metallic color in green or blue. Another stingless bee, the orchard bee, is also an attractive green metallic color. These bees are generally smaller than honeybees. Like their larger cousins they are communal, although they don't produce honey.

Spotted Bees

• One bee in America with spots is the digger bee, Holcopasites calliopsidis, which has a brown abdomen with black blotches and white spots. Digger bees, as their name hints, dig into the ground to lay their eggs in areas with sparse grass. You can find the digger bee from Minnesota to Tennessee. While these bees do have stingers, they are known as a very gentle species. Although not considered a social bee, they tend to select similar sites to nest in so there can be many of the bees digging in one area of the garden or lawn.