Bee a Garden Expert: A Guide to the Most Common Types of Bees in Your Garden
Different types of Bees. We all know that they’re important for pollinating our flowers and food crops, but when we spot one buzzing around the garden, how can we tell which type it is?
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Different Types of Bees
Today, let’s take a closer look at the differences between some of the most common types of bees — honeybees, bumblebees, carpenter bees, and mason bees — so you can become familiar with the bees that may frequent your garden!
The range of bee species and types is much broader than this post but I wanted to share what you may spot in your garden.
Honeybees
The honeybee (Apis mellifera) is probably the bee species that most people are familiar with.
They make their homes in large hives and produce honey.
Honeybees form tight-knit communities with a single queen bee producing eggs and thousands of worker bees gathering nectar from flowers, blooming trees, and shrubs.
These are also one of the few bee species that survive through winter months by eating stored honey.
Bumblebees
Bumblebees (Bombus spp.) are found all over the world with over 250 species of them.
They have furry bodies and come in many colors ranging from yellow to black or a combination.
A single colony can number 500 individual bumblebees but can exceed 1000.
That may sound like a lot but compared to honey bee hives the number is quite modest.
Bumble bees have four wings to achieve flight. All of them are relatively small in relation to their total body size.
This has led to the common misconception that the bumblebee should be physically incapable of flight.
However, this is based on a flawed idea of bumblebee flight.
Many have assumed that bumblebee wings are fixed.
Instead, the bees can actually swivel or sweep their wings like a helicopter, so they flap their wings back and forth, rather than up and down.
This creates flows of air to help them remain in the air. They beat their wings approximately 100 to 200 times every second.
Bumblebees are known for their loud buzzing sound as they fly around looking for nectar and pollen from flowers.
Bumblebees will build nests somewhere close to the ground or below the ground.
They can appropriate all kinds of environments into suitable nests, including human buildings, abandoned animal nests, and even old furniture.
The nest must be relatively cool and receive little direct sunlight.
The bumblebee is an integral part of the natural ecosystem, transporting pollen between male and female flower parts.
Do you grow berries, tomatoes, or squash? These plants in particular benefit from a healthy bumblebee population.
Carpenter Bees
Carpenter bees (Xylocopa spp.) get their name because they bore tunnels into wood to lay their eggs inside.
These bees can often be mistaken for bumblebees due to their similar color patterns; however, while bumblebee abdomens appear fuzzy all over, carpenter bee abdomens are shiny and smooth down the middle with a small patch of fur at the end.
For many years, scientists believed these bees were a solitary species that did not engage in social behavior.
However, more recent research shows that they sometimes live cooperatively in loosely knit social groups.
Whether they choose the loose social network or to be solitary depends upon the abundance or lack thereof of nesting sites.
Do carpenter bees sting?
Believe it or not, the most defensive carpenter bees are actually the males, who cannot sting, defending their mating territory.
Male carpenter bees have distinctive white facial markings that make them easy to identify.
They will choose locations that give them the best access to females and ward off any threats or competitors with defensive flight maneuvers.
Female carpenter bees will defend themselves and their nests if directly threatened, though they are unlikely to sting unless they are aggressively handled or physically threatened.
So the answer is yes and no!
Carpenter bees can be destructive of wood surfaces.
One way to deter them is to paint any bare wood surface.
Or if you prefer the natural wood look you can treat the bare wood with almond oil once a year and this harmlessly repels them.
Mason Bees
Mason bees (Osmia spp.) are tunnel-nesting, solitary bees, which means that, unlike the social honeybee, every female is a “queen” who lays eggs and raises offspring on her own, without the support of a highly-organized, social colony.
Most mason bees in the U.S. are native and highly effective in pollinating orchards, gardens, and other crop-bearing plants.
Experts believe supporting the native mason bees is an easy answer to the depletion of the honey bee population.
After mating and finding an existing tunnel for her nest, the female bee gathers mud in her jaws and uses it to build a wall at the back of the tunnel so thus the name Mason Bee.
Next, she makes hundreds of visits to the garden to collect pollen and nectar, which she piles into a golden glob at the end of the tunnel.
This sustaining mass will be her egg’s first meal when it hatches. Next, she backs into the tunnel and deposits an egg on top of the food source.
Once the egg is laid, the female bee collects more mud and uses it to build a wall that seals off the egg inside its own chamber.
She repeats this process until the tunnel is filled with eggs, each tucked inside its own cell partition or bedroom.
Then she closes the tunnel with a mud plug to protect her offspring from predators.
This pollen-gathering and egg-laying work is done when early spring flowers, bushes, and fruit trees are in bloom.
In the US, this typically occurs between February and May, depending on where you live.
Mason bees are prolific pollinators
A mason has about a 4-week life span which she spends filling as many nesting tunnels.
She pollinates flowers profusely as she gathers food to supply her nest. Then, sadly she dies.
Inside the nesting chambers, eggs begin their transformation into adult bees. They hatch into larvae and consume the pollen-nectar globs.
After a rest period, the larva spins a cocoon. By about September, a fully-formed adult bee lies inside each chamber.
The adult bee now waits through the winter months until the spring air temperature rises to a consistent 55-degree range.
Then it emerges from the tunnel to mate and repeat the egg-laying, pollen-gathering cycle all over again.
They are non-aggressive and rarely sting. If you wish to attract these wonderfully beneficial bees to your garden provide a bug hotel for them.
I particularly like these Mason Bee Houses. You can also often find them at local quality nurseries or even big box stores.
There are also instructions for creating your own online. I wish to build one this year and I will share how I do it!
Educational Bee Graphic or Chart
Now that you’ve learned more about some of the most common types of bees living in our gardens across North America, why not try your hand at identifying them?
Want a stylish and informative chart of the different bee types? I love this easy-on-the-eyes yet detailed bee chart.
It is nice to have it in my greenhouse to easily identify bees I may see flitting around my garden.
Happy gardening!
