(Photo: Courtesy of Chelsea Green Publishing) And it's the solitary bees that I have found most fascinating, more because of their nesting behavior than anything else.īASCOMB: Well, how do they nest that sets them apart?ĭancing with Bees: A Journey Back to Nature is about naturalist Brigit Strawbridge Howard’s desire to recapture the connection with the natural world that she felt as a child. Bumblebees collect nectar and store nectar to feed their young, but they're not alchemists like honeybees, they don't turn it into honey. I think that's, that's one of the first things. And it's only the honeybees that make honey, hence the name honeybees. And the majority of the bees on this planet are solitary. So that doesn't happen with solitary bees. But there's also cooperative care of the young. And they have sometimes tens of thousands of workers in a colony and they have males. Some of them have social traits, but some of them are like single mums. Broadly speaking, you can divide these bees between those that are social, truly social, that's the honeybees and the bumblebees, and those that are not fully social. Plus there are some subspecies and there are around 250 different species of bumblebee and the rest are solitary bees. ![]() And I think about nine of those are honeybees. And those are just the ones that have been recorded, you know, and described, and I think you have about 4,000 species in North America alone. HOWARD: Okay, well on planet Earth, there are some 20,000 to 25,000 different species. I mean, there are thousands of different species of bees, as you mentioned, and many of us probably just think of honey bees, maybe bumble bees, but how many species are there and, and what you know, really sets them apart from each other? Thank you so much for inviting me.īASCOMB: In your journey to learn about bees, you learned a lot. In her book Dancing with Bees: a Journey Back to Nature, Brigit describes how she learned to notice the world around her by paying special attention to the honeybees, the bumblebees, and solitary bees that buzzed right through her garden and into her heart. When author Brigit Strawbridge Howard realized she wanted to recapture her childhood connection to nature she chose the humble bee as ambassador to the world she wanted to explore. ![]() But on the way to adulthood that curiosity and connection are often lost. As children, most of us are innately curious about the natural world. BASCOMB: It’s Living on Earth, I’m Bobby Bascomb.
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