Buckeye Yard and Garden onLine

Two families of true bees, the Andrenidae (MINING BEES) and Anthophoridae (DIGGER BEES), are making the news in some areas of Ohio, unfortunately for the wrong reasons.  These bees nest in burrows they construct in the soil.  They are classified as "solitary" bees because unlike their honeybee relatives, they do not live in a single, well-defended hive.  Instead, each mining or digger bee female usually digs her own individual burrow in which to rear her own young.  However, large numbers of these solitary bees may congregate in a common area where a soil conditions are attractive for burrowing.  This is where some problems arise; the soils to which they are attracted can sometimes be in high traffic areas.  This is what made the news in one city, the mining bees had colonized a portion of a playground.  The local's response was to police-tape the area and hirer an exterminator to destroy the bees.  There was additional talk of fanning out into surrounding neighborhoods to eliminate any additional collections of the bees.

As reported in BYGL last week,  these bees typically are not a stinging threat, but the presence of numerous bees flying close to the ground causes people to react to them negatively.  The destruction of these bees is more of a loss than people realize.  These bees are pollinators.  The female mining bees stock each cell they construct in their burrows with pollen and nectar collected from flowers, and then deposits an egg on the food mass.  The larva hatches and consumes the stored pollen and nectar.  When mature, it becomes a pupa, and finally becomes a new adult bee.  Since the bees are visiting numerous flowers to collect pollen and nectar, they are performing an important service for gardeners and farmers.  With the problems facing our primary pollinator, the European honey bee (Apis mellifera), it is important to conserve all other pollinators including the mining and digger bees when ever possible