Whether you want to be a beekeeper or just learn about the environment, knowing the important bee types is vital. Read on to learn bee identification skills.
If you spend a lot of time outside, you’ve probably seen plenty of different bees buzzing around. Although many of them look similar, there are various bee species in the United States and around the world. Believe it or not, they all have drastically different lifestyles and roles in the environment. Explore the most important types of bees and learn how to identify each one.
Bumblebees
Bumblebees are one of the biggest bee types, and you’ll know when there’s one nearby when you hear their intense buzzing. You can identify them by their loud buzz, hairy bodies, and pollen baskets, and you’re likely to see them from early spring to late summer. Fascinatingly, they are a social species, and they live in nests with hundreds of other bumblebees.
Honeybees
Honeybees are easily the most impactful bee species in the world, and beekeepers continue to domesticate them to boost their population and harvest their delicious honey. Interestingly, most of them are female, working together to run their hive and produce honey. Honeybees have smooth, brownish abdomens and pollen baskets on their back legs.
You’ll see them foraging for nectar and pollen from spring through fall, and you should protect them at all costs. Knowing the role honeybees play in the environment and economy may encourage you to make your property more bee-friendly.
Leafcutter Bees
Intriguingly, you may mistake leafcutter bees for honeybees and vice versa, but you can decipher the two because leafcutters are hairier than honeybees. Furthermore, leafcutter bees are a solitary species, meaning they live and rear offspring independently. You may see them in late spring or summer, and they build their nests using leaves and other plant materials.
After learning about the most important types of bees, you’ll be able to decipher them when you see them out and about this season. Although honeybees are the most significant bees to us as humans, all bee species play vital roles in their ecosystems and the environment as a whole.