2/13/2024 0 Comments Bright blue bee![]() Their size makes it difficult to monitor movement with the naked eye, and their bodies are too small to track with radio transmitters. However, there are challenges to studying the lives of these small buzzing creatures, says Jha. And the more genetic variation in a population, the greater the chances the species can survive extreme events, such as disease and climate change, explains Jha. This impressive range means the bees bring genes from further away, making the plants more genetically diverse. Credit: Laurel Treviño/courtesy the Jha Lab Related Segment The Secret Life Of Tiny Bees This shiny, blue sweat bee is a common pollinator in Texas. “It’s like a typical human traveling from Chicago to L.A., just based on distance relative to body size.” “If you think about what that means, it’s almost more than a million times their body size,” says Jha. In a recent Science Friday interview, the team reported that these tiny bees are flying for miles in the plant community. But tiny bees are also “very involved and very important in plant reproduction, both for our crops, our food items, as well as our native plant communities.”įor more than ten years in Panama, Jha and her research group studied a large community of small-bodied bees and their pollination of a tropical fruiting tree. “Many people talk about honey bees and bumble bees,” says Jha. While they may be small in size, these bees also play a crucial role in the pollination of native plants. In fact, there are more than 20,000 known species of wild bees on our planet, says Jha. But these Hymenoptera gems live all around the world and are common in many environments, from temperate to tropical. The sweat bee is just one of the many tiny bees-the size of a grain of rice or a lady bug-native to Texas that Jha and her lab studies. Credit: Dennis Briggs/courtesy the Jha Lab “I always imagine that they must feel like they’re the most gorgeous creatures on the planet.” Solitary bees lay eggs on “bee bread.” When the eggs hatch, the larvae will have enough food to eat throughout development. “They almost look like jewels, they just sparkle,” says Shalene Jha, a biologist and bee researcher at the University of Texas at Austin, by phone. And in the midst of tending to your garden or jogging in the afternoon, you may find this small, iridescent bee land on your arm for a quick snack of essential salts in your sweat. Unlike the social hive behavior of honey and bumble bees, it lives a short, solitary life-collecting pollen and nectar into a sticky ball of “bee bread” for its offspring. Zipping by in a flash of shimmering blues, greens, and even purples, is a member of Halictidae, or the sweat bee. Credit: Public Domain via Flickr/ University of Texas at Austin’s Insects Unlocked ![]() ![]() A bright metallic, blue sweat bee (Augochloropsis metallica), found in Bastrop, Texas.
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