{"id":6769,"date":"2012-10-25T02:40:35","date_gmt":"2012-10-25T06:40:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/extension.umaine.edu\/blueberries\/?p=6769"},"modified":"2020-04-15T14:13:02","modified_gmt":"2020-04-15T18:13:02","slug":"wild-bee-pollinators-the-genus-andrena","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/extension.umaine.edu\/blueberries\/2012\/10\/25\/wild-bee-pollinators-the-genus-andrena\/","title":{"rendered":"Wild Bee Pollinators: The Genus Andrena"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Sara Bushmann <\/em><\/p>\n

In May and June of 2010 and 2011, I collected wild bees from 24 blueberry fields in Hancock County in the towns of Orland, Penobscot, Sedgwick and Blue Hill. By “wild” bees I mean any bee that is not a honeybee or a commercial bumblebee. Most of the wild bees are native, occurring naturally in Maine, but a few are not native and have been brought here by humans at some point in time. The wild bees are generally small- the size of a honeybee or less. The wild bees are mostly solitary, living individually or maybe in aggregations, but never forming the large colonies seen with honeybees. Naturally occurring bumblebees are wild, and they live in fairly large, social colonies, but I did not collect bumblebees. In the spring the only bumblebees that are out in the blueberry fields are the queens that are foraging for nectar and pollen before starting to lay eggs. If I collect a queen, I prevent the founding of an entire large colony of bumblebees. I did not want to do this, so I avoided collecting bumblebees whenever possible.<\/p>\n

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A field assistant shows how to hand-catch bees on blueberry flowers; taken in Addison ME, 2012.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I used two methods of capture. The first method involved placing small, colored cups filled with soapy water in the fields for 24-48 hours. This method catches anything attracted to the cup, including plenty of insects that are not bees (and unfortunately slugs like the cups as well). Many of the bees I’ve caught have come from these cup traps, but just because I catch a bee in a blueberry field doesn’t mean that that bee pollinates blueberry flowers. So, I also caught individual bees found foraging on blueberry flowers. From these bees I have made a list of possible wild bee blueberry pollinators.<\/p>\n

This list includes 223 individual bees from 34 species caught on blueberry flowers. More than half of these 223 bees come from only three species:<\/p>\n