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Author: Admin | 2025-04-27
(Photos 4A–C). Photo 2. Examples of bees that use different nesting strategies in Pennsylvania: (A) a female solitary ground-nesting mining bee in the genus Andrena, (B) a female sweat bee in the tribe Augochlorini at the entrance of its nest in decaying wood, and (C) a primitively social bumble bee queen (Bombus impatiens) searches for a cavity to establish her colony in. Photo credit: Margarita M. López-Uribe (A) and Shelby Kerrin Kilpatrick (B–C).Nearly all of the Pennsylvanian bee species are solitary. Female solitary bees are responsible for constructing nests and collecting food for their young on their own. Some species of solitary bees will form nesting aggregations in which many individual females nest close together (e.g., species in the genera Andrena, Colletes, Eucera, Melissodes) (Photos 2A, 3A). In contrast, honey bees are the only fully social species of bee in the state, living in perennial colonies composed of tens of thousands of individuals with workers (non-reproductive females), drones (males), and the queen (reproductive female) which have distinct roles (Photo 3B).Fourteen species of bumble bees in Pennsylvania also form colonies, but they are only active from the spring through fall and are considered primitively social because the queen overwinters in solitude and looks very similar to the workers (Photo 2C). Some species, like the eastern carpenter bee and closely-related small carpenter bees (in genus Ceratina), may be solitary or exhibit cooperative breeding, in which a group of females shares a single nest entrance and a weak or brief social structure (Photos 3C–D). There are also several groups of parasitic bee species in the state. Parasitic bees are either "cuckoos," which invade the nest of a host bee and lay their own egg in it for the host to care for (e.g., species in the genera Nomada, Triepeolus, Epeolus, Sphecodes, and Coelioxys) (Photo 3E), or social parasites that infiltrate a colony and effectively replace its queen so that their own offspring are reared instead (e.g., four Pennsylvanian species of bumble bees in the subgenus Psithyrus). Photo 3. Examples of bees that exhibit different social behaviors in Pennsylvania: (A) an aggregation of solitary Colletes cellophane bee nests, (B) social honey bee (Apis mellifera) workers in their hive, (C) a female solitary or cooperatively-breeding eastern carpenter bee (Xylocopa virginica), (D) a mating pair of solitary or cooperatively-breeding small carpenter bees in the genus Ceratina, and (E) a cuckoo bee in the genus Nomada visiting a flower for nectar. Photo credit: Margarita M. López-Uribe (A), Brooke Lawrence (B), and Shelby Kerrin Kilpatrick (C–E).All bees forage for nectar as an energy source for themselves and, in the case of females of non-parasitic species, for their larvae to feed on. Female non-parasitic bees also forage for pollen,
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