How Many Types of Bees Are There? A Look at Bee Variety

Honey bees are the bee most people picture, but they are a tiny handful among the many thousands of bee species on Earth. The count of known kinds runs past 20,000, and thousands more are thought to be still unnamed.1Wikipedia. Bee The bigger surprise is that most of the world’s bees live alone rather than in hives.

How Many Bee Species Have Been Counted

Scientists currently recognise 20,934 bee species. A species is a distinct kind of bee that breeds with its own type.2PubMed Central. Estimating global bee species richness and taxonomic gaps The true number is higher: at least 24,705 to 26,164 species likely exist worldwide.3PubMed Central. Estimating global bee species richness and taxonomic gaps That leaves somewhere between about 3,800 and 5,200 kinds not yet described, an 18 to 25% gap.4PubMed Central. Estimating global bee species richness and taxonomic gaps

The word “species” is less obvious than it sounds. Two bees that look nearly identical can still count as separate kinds. Looks alone are an imperfect guide, because males and females of one kind can look quite different, and a single kind can vary in colour from place to place.

New bees keep turning up for practical reasons. Many are tiny and look alike to the eye, and telling them apart often takes a microscope and an expert. Some regions have also been sampled far less than others.

A bee counts as described only after a specialist publishes a formal description and gives it a scientific name. A bee can be well known to locals or collectors and still be missing from the official total. Specialists compare a new specimen against preserved reference specimens in museum collections, which is slow work and one reason the backlog of unnamed bees persists. The gap is therefore mostly a backlog of bees that exist and may already sit unlabelled in drawers or sample jars, not only bees nobody has ever caught.

Relationships among bees at broad group levels are well settled.5PubMed. A supermatrix phylogeny of the world’s bees (Hymenoptera: Anthophila) How some closely related kinds fit together is still uncertain,6PubMed. A supermatrix phylogeny of the world’s bees (Hymenoptera: Anthophila) so different books and websites can give slightly different totals.

The Seven Bee Families

All bees descend from a single shared ancestor and are sorted into seven families.7Wikipedia. Bee They began as predatory wasps that started feeding pollen to their young.8Mann Lake Bee & Ag Supply. How Have Honey Bees Evolved? That shift is thought to have begun during the age of dinosaurs, roughly 80 to 150 million years ago.

The key change was diet. Wasps hunt other insects to feed their young, while bees collect pollen and nectar, so bees are essentially wasp relatives that turned vegetarian. Bees often have branched or feathery body hairs that catch and carry pollen, a feature most wasps lack, which is one practical way to tell a bee from a wasp up close. Many bees carry pollen on their legs or on the underside of the abdomen, depending on the family, so where the pollen sits can hint at which group a bee belongs to.

Knowing the family tells you roughly how a bee nests and feeds even when you can’t name the exact kind. Appearance and family don’t always line up, though: honey bees, bumblebees and carpenter bees look very different but sit together in Apidae.

Apidae and Megachilidae form a long-tongued group.11PubMed. Analysis of family-level relationships in bees (Hymenoptera: Apiformes) using 28S and two previously unexplored nuclear genes: CAD and RNA polymerase II Long tongues let bees reach nectar in deep flowers, while short-tongued families favour open, shallow ones.

Most Bees Live Alone

Honey bees, bumblebees and stingless bees live in colonies with a queen and workers.12Wikipedia. Bee Yet over 90% of bee species are solitary, with each female building and stocking her own nest.13Wikipedia. Bee Mason, carpenter, leafcutter and sweat bees are common solitary types.14Wikipedia. Bee

A solitary bee’s year is quiet. A female builds a short row of cells in a tunnel, stocks each cell with pollen and lays one egg in it. She usually dies before her young emerge. The young often spend winter inside the nest and appear the next spring.

With no hive to defend, solitary bees are generally gentle and rarely sting. Male bees cannot sting at all.

Some solitary bees nest above ground in hollow stems, holes in wood or other cavities.15Journal of Applied Ecology. Landscape and local factors influence solitary bee nesting, but reported effects show little consistency across studies Others dig nests in the ground, favouring bare soil and the right slope and sun.16Journal of Applied Ecology. Landscape and local factors influence solitary bee nesting, but reported effects show little consistency across studies Among cavity nesters, mason bees can dominate, making up 98% of bees emerging from nests in one burned forest.17PubMed Central. The diversity of cavity nesting bees (Hymenoptera: Megachilidae) recolonizing a post-wildfire landscape and their pollen provisions, with reference to aerial seed mix applications

In spring you may spot ground nests in a lawn as small holes with piles of soil in bare patches. Many bees can nest close together, yet each nest is separate. They usually vanish within weeks and do little harm.

Stingless bees are tropical social bees that pollinate wild plants and crops.18Elsevier / PubMed Central. African stingless bees’ diversity, ecology, and behavior Some are kept in hives for their honey and pollination.19Elsevier / PubMed Central. African stingless bees’ diversity, ecology, and behavior

Social bees differ from each other too. Honey bee colonies can persist for years, with a queen laying eggs and thousands of workers. A bumblebee colony is usually much smaller and lasts only one season; the old colony dies off in autumn, and only newly mated queens survive the winter to start fresh nests. Some sweat bees live in small groups, so bee lifestyles form a spectrum rather than a clean split between hive and lone bees.

From Tiny To Kumquat-Sized

The world’s smallest bee, Perdita minima, is about 2 mm long.20USGS. How many species of native bees are in the United States? Some carpenter bees reach the size of a kumquat.21USGS. How many species of native bees are in the United States? A 2 mm bee is smaller than a grain of rice and easily mistaken for a gnat or a tiny fly.

Size changes how bees live. In stingless bees, larger species have larger eyes with more and bigger lenses.22PubMed Central. Body size limits dim-light foraging activity in stingless bees (Apidae: Meliponini) Bigger eyes gather more light, so bigger bees can forage in dimmer light, early or late in the day,23PubMed Central. Body size limits dim-light foraging activity in stingless bees (Apidae: Meliponini) and still find flowers and their way home when the sun is low. Small bodies, meanwhile, can save energy in flight.24PubMed Central. Size-Dependent Scaling of Stingless Bee Flight Metabolism Reveals an Energetic Benefit to Small Body Size

Colour and shape vary just as much. Metallic green and blue bees, such as many sweat bees, have a shiny sheen that makes them easy to mistake for flies or beetles. Bumblebees are fuzzy and round, while many small bees look nearly bare and slim. Some bees are striped like wasps and some are almost entirely black, so colour is a weak way to tell bee types apart.

Hover flies copy bee and wasp stripes, and some large ones even fake stinging moves.25University of Chicago Press Journals (The American Naturalist). The relationship between morphological and behavioral mimicry in hover flies (Diptera: Syrphidae) Flies have two wings and short, stubby antennae. Bees have four wings and longer, elbowed antennae.

Where In The World Bees Are Most Varied

Bee variety peaks in dry, sunny, open landscapes rather than forests.26PubMed. Global Patterns and Drivers of Bee Distribution Hotspots include the southeastern United States, the Mediterranean, the Middle East and Australia.27PubMed Central. Global Trends in Climate Suitability of Bees: Ups and Downs in a Warming World Tropical regions like Brazil are not especially rich in bee species.28PubMed Central. Global Trends in Climate Suitability of Bees: Ups and Downs in a Warming World So bee variety has two peaks, north and south of the tropics, unlike most life.29PubMed. Global Patterns and Drivers of Bee Distribution A dry scrubland or a Mediterranean hillside may host more bee kinds than a patch of rainforest, even though the rainforest has more total life.

Deserts and open country suit bees for several reasons. Many flowers bloom in open sunny ground, and bare soil gives ground nesters places to dig. Dry conditions help keep stored pollen from moulding. Plenty of sun lets bees warm up and fly for more hours of the day, and many kinds need that warmth to be active. After rain, many dry-region wildflowers bloom in a short, intense burst, a rich feast for bees whose lives are timed to those blooms.

Bees also turn up in extreme places. Alpine bumblebees can hover in air as thin as that found above 9,000 m, higher than Everest.30PubMed Central. Surpassing Mt. Everest: extreme flight performance of alpine bumble-bees Some bees fly at night, finding their way by landmarks in near darkness.31PubMed. Seeing in the dark: vision and visual behaviour in nocturnal bees and wasps One night bee’s eyes are about 27 times more light-sensitive than daytime bees’ eyes.32PubMed. Retinal and optical adaptations for nocturnal vision in the halictid bee Megalopta genalis

For a gardener, a sunny, open garden with bare patches and flowering plants can be good bee habitat, even though it looks plain next to a shady woodland. Heavy shade, dense lawn and thick mulch over all soil reduce nesting chances for ground-nesting bees, so a garden’s layout affects which bees show up.

Why Wild Bee Variety Matters

In one crop study, native bees alone gave enough pollination at over 90% of farms.33PubMed. Native bees provide insurance against ongoing honey bee losses Strawberries pollinated by wild bees grew heavier than those pollinated by honey bees.34Journal of Applied Ecology. Pollination by wild bees yields larger strawberries than pollination by honey bees In some apple orchards, wild stingless bees did 35% of pollination.35Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment. Efficiency and effectiveness of native bees and honey bees as pollinators of apples in New South Wales orchards A mix of bee types therefore protects crops if honey bees decline.36PubMed. Native bees provide insurance against ongoing honey bee losses

Different bees handle flowers differently. A bee that grabs and shakes a flower may transfer more pollen than a honey bee that works politely and moves on. Wild bees also often visit in cool or wet weather when honey bees stay in the hive.

If a farm depends on a single pollinator, one disease or bad season can cut the crop, while many kinds of bees spread the risk. Different kinds also fly at different times of year, so a varied community covers the whole bloom season rather than just one stretch.

Far less is known about the health of solitary bees than honey bees.37Museum of the Earth. Threats to Bees Honey bees are counted and inspected by beekeepers, while wild solitary bees nest out of sight and are rarely monitored. Even so, 49 bee species in eastern North America appear to be declining.38Museum of the Earth. Threats to Bees

You can help varied bees at home. Plant flowers that bloom from spring to autumn, and leave some bare, sunny soil for ground nesters. Leave hollow stems standing over winter, and limit pesticide use, especially on open blooms.