by Rick Forrester
Year 2022 will be a good year for bees down on the trail as FLMSP is installing native Ohio prairies in Oregonia and south of Fosters. We will be asking for volunteers to help in the next few weeks.
Beginning in March and April, bees will start showing up on the trail looking for tree flower buds and early ground flowers, so, bee sure to look for one or more of the approximately 500 species of bees in Ohio. The photo on the left shows a Bumble Bee (Bombus). A few other common Ohio species are pictured below.
Here's how to easily tell the difference between bees, wasps and flies:
Flies have two wings; bees have four wings. Wasps have four wings, but are very slender, usually hairless, and and don’t carry pollen on their legs. Wasps can sting multiple times whereas bees sting only once and leave the barbed stinger with its poison sack in your skin. The bee will then die. Bees are vegetarian, so if the insect you see is eating another insect, it is a fly or wasp.
Be on the lookout for “swarms” where a bee colony has divided and 50% of the bees with a queen are moving to a new location to start a brand new hive. The swarm will look like a rolling boil of thousands of bees hanging on a tree or fence posts. The bees in the swarm are usually not aggressive, as they are not protecting their territory or a hive at this time.
To find a honey beehive in the woods, pioneers would place sugar water in a cup. When the bee takes her fill (worker bees are females), the bee will head straight for the hive. The pioneer would mark the straight line of the flight. They would then move the sugar water to another location, watch the bee, and mark that line. Where the two lines intersect is where the hive is located. The hives are usually in a burned-out hollow tree.
Bee thankful for bees as they are critical to our food supply. Next time you are on the trail, take a moment to spot some of our flying furry friends!
Below:
Honey Bee (Apis mellifera), Leaf Cutting Bee (Megachile)
Sweat Bee type 1 (Halictidae), Seat Bee type 2 (Halictidae)
More bee identification photos are available at Pollinator.org
Some source material from Ohio State University in cooperation with Pollinator Partnership.
March 2022
