BC has more than 450 species of native bees, and our big, well-known, colony-dwelling bumble bees make up only about 30 of those species. The rest are mostly solitary and they are also mostly much smaller, from about 5 to 10 mm overall.
So where do we find all these tiny bees?
Small bees don’t have the resources to travel long distances to forage, so you’re more likely to see them near good nesting sites: open ground, dried stems, and cavities in rocky areas or walls. Many people are leaving lawns unmowed these days once clover starts to bloom, and that’s a great place to start looking. Grassy areas on dikes, at roadsides, or in undeveloped properties can also be places to watch. Areas with taller grasses interspersed with other flowering plants like lupines, buttercups, pearly everlasting and yarrow are home to many small bees.
It is possible to identify many of our small bees to genus level by body shape, size, and colouring. However, these bees are almost all impossible to identify to species from photos or in the field, so it’s hard to get to know them.
Tips for tiny bee watching:
- Pick a warm day in a place where there are flowers in the sun.
- Face the sun so you don’t throw a shadow over the flowers.
- Watch for motion (including shadows moving over the ground) as you won’t hear most of these bees.
- Stand still and wait.
- Be prepared to see bees much smaller than you’ve ever imagined: at first, they might look like flies or even ants. (Some of them will be flies or ants, but you can learn to distinguish them.)
- Don’t move quickly: these bees are easily spooked.
- Once you know what to look for, you’ll see them often.
Information and photos shared by an interested amateur ….
Photo above: This tiny mason bee (subgenus Melanosmia) was “dancing” on a lupine bloom to spread the flower’s wings and gain access to its pollen and nectar. When the keel (dark, pointed) is exposed on a lupine, you can assume a bee has visited it for this same purpose. The lupine was in an area with tall grass and clover.