Bees! Diversity, Evolution, Conservation

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September 27, 2019 – January 5, 2021

Come explore a realm often overlooked – the incredible world of bees! Investigate their ancient origins, their immense diversity, and the ever-evolving drama between flowers and pollinators. There are over 20,000 bee species, from the newly rediscovered Wallace's Giant Bee and the carnivorous vulture bee to the fuzzy backyard bumblebee. Bees have many unique lifestyles - some live in solitary nests or social colonies, some are parasitic, and some nest in the ground, wood, or stems. Get an up-close view of bee anatomy and behaviors while learning how different species nest, interact, and forage. Find out how humans depend on pollination for our most nutritious and flavorful foods, especially here in New York! Explore high resolution macro photography, fossil and modern bee specimens, videos, interactives, and engaging activities for younger visitors. Become an advocate for bees and discover how they impact our world – and how you can help protect them.

If you are unable to visit the exhibit in person, or would like to have another look at it, please visit the online version of the Bees! exhibit.

This exhibit was developed and designed in conjunction with Bryan Danforth, Chair and Professor of the Department of Entomology at Cornell University and author of the book, The Solitary Bees: Biology, Evolution, Conservation. The exhibit was funded by grants from the National Science Foundation and the Tompkins County Tourism Program.


Bee of the Month

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Rusty-patched bumblebee

Bombus affinis

April’s Bee of the Month

Hometown: North America

Favorite Season: Spring – Fall

Hobbies: Buzz-pollinating

Traits: Chubby, red-brown abdomen

Day in the Life: These bees spend most of their time pollinating wild flowers. 87% of rusty-patched bumblebees have died off over the last 20 years. They only live in 1% of their previous habitat range, threatened by habitat loss, pesticides, and climate change.

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Killer Bee

(“Africanized Honey Bee”)

Apis mellifera

March’s Bee of the Month

Hometown: Brazil, then Central and North America

Favorite Season: Summer – Fall

Personal Motto: “Get off my lawn!”

Traits: Yellow stripes

Day in the Life: The product of a failed 1950s science experiment. Aggressive and extra defensive, killer bees will swarm animals that get too close to the nest. They attack in huge numbers, and often fatally wound their target.

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Blue-banded Bee

Amegilla murrayensis

February’s Bee of the Month

Hometown: Australia

Favorite Season: active throughout the year in the northern part of the range but only active in summertime (November-February) in the southern part of the range.

Hobbies: Headbanging

Traits: Bright blue stripes, medium-sized, compact, fast-flying bee.

Life history: Solitary, univoltine (one generation/year), nests in vertical soil surfaces, like river embankments

Behavior: Members of the genus Amegilla (the blue-banded bees) are common bees in the Old World tropics (Asia and Africa). These fast-flying, compact bees are common visitors to flowers with poricidal anthers – such as Solanum (tomato and relatives). To extract pollen from these flowers the females must “buzz” or “sonicate” the flower to expel the pollen from the anthers. While most bees do this by vibrating their flight muscles, Amegilla murrayensis has a different strategy. Females of this bee bang their heads against the anthers of Solanum. This remarkable behavior was recorded in high-speed video by a team of researchers at the Adelaide Botanic Garden in 2016 and reported in the journal Current Biology. We don’t know why these bees have switched to a different mode of pollen removal, but it does illustrate how adaptable bee foraging behavior can be. This behavior might, unfortunately, give the bees a headache.

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Wallace’s Giant Bee

Megachile pluto

January’s Bee of the Month

Hometown: North Moluccas islands, Indonesia.

Favorite Season: Summer (in the Southern Hemisphere).

Hobbies: Hide-and-seek.

Traits: The biggest bee! (the picture shows Wallace's size in comparison to a honey bee.)

Life history: Solitary, univoltine (one generation/year), “resin” bee. This bee was originally collected by Alfred Russel Wallace in the late 19th century. Wallace’s Giant Resin bee is exceedingly rare and has only been collected on a few occasions. A recent expedition in early 2019 confirmed that M. pluto is still present. The story, photos and videos of the expedition spurred an international social media phenomenon. The bee is threatened by habitat loss and trafficking by commercial insect collectors.

Behavior: These bees are remarkable for their habit of nesting exclusively in the arboreal nests of a single species of termite: Microcerotermes amboinensis (family Termitidae). Females collect wood fibers and plant resins to construct a resistant, waterproof brood cell just below the surface of the termite nest. They provision their brood cell with a moist mixture of pollen and nectar, and lay an egg. Females may share nests but each female constructs and provisions her own brood cell.

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Yarrow's fork-tongue bee

Caupolicana yarrowi

December’s Bee of the Month

Hometown: The arid tropics; from Arizona and New Mexico (USA) in the north to San Louis Potosi and Guanajuato (Mexico) in the south.

Favorite Season: Summer, especially the late-summer rainy season.

Hobbies: Brewing beer.

Traits: Large, fast-flying, ground-nesting solitary bee who likes coming out in early morning or late afternoon.

Life history: Solitary, univoltine (one generation/year), ground-nesting bee.

Behavior: Caupolicana yarrowi belongs to a subfamily of large solitary bees that are known for their unusual habit of making “bee beer” (the subfamily Diphaglossinae). Females provision their brood cells with a large quantity of nectar and a very small quantity of pollen. In the case of Yarrow's, the pollen is obtained by “buzzing” the flowers of the Silverleaf nightshade (Solanum elaeagnifolium) and the nectar is obtained from the large flowers of Palmer's century plant (Agave palmeri). The resulting, soupy mixture has abundant fermenting yeasts, probably obtained from the Agave flowers. The soupy provisions smell like Kombucha or Vegemite and the bee larvae swim across the surface of the bubbling mixture eating their “bee beer”. These bees appear to have replaced protein derived from pollen with protein obtained from their fermenting yeasts. But life is not all about partying for these bees – they have to watch out for a common brood parasite: Triepeolus grandis (Apidae). Females of this large, black-and-white brood parasite lay their eggs in the brood cell of Yarrow's. When the Triepeolus larvae emerge from their egg, they attack the host egg or larva and then consume the bee beer – not a happy ending for the Caupolicana larva.

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Dawson’s burrowing bee

Amegilla dawsoni

November’s Bee of the Month

Hometown: Western Australia

Favorite Season: Springtime (in the Southern Hemisphere).

Hobbies: Spelunking

Traits: Biggest, baddest bee in Australia & a fast flier

Life history: Solitary, univoltine (one generation/year), ground-nesting bee. Females form massive nesting aggregations of over 10,000 nests in bare, red, clay-like soil.

Behavior: Mating involves “scramble competition” in which males aggressively grapple with each other for access to recently emerged, virgin females. Large males generally displace small males so small males patrol the perimeter of the nestsite in the hopes of finding a female who has escaped the advances of their larger brothers. This massive solitary bee was featured in Sir David Attenborough’s series “Life”.