When most people hear bee, they picture the honey bee: striped, living in a hive, useful, and maybe a little alarming in numbers. But the honey bee is only one bee, and in North America it is not a native one. Florida’s native bees are a much wider, stranger, quieter company: more than 300 species statewide, including 29 species found nowhere else. Some are small enough to pass for ants. Some shine metallic green or blue. Some are fuzzy and round, and some are so slight you may only notice them when a flower seems to tremble by itself. In ] Pinellas, they are not confined to preserves. They visit yards, school gardens, parks, sidewalk plantings, beach edges, stormwater ponds, and balcony pots—anywhere flowers and shelter are allowed to remain. The first thing to understand is that most native bees do not live in hives. Many are solitary. One female makes her own nest, gathers her own food, and prepares small nursery chambers for her young. A sweat bee may dig into sunny, lightly covered soil. A leafcutter bee may cut clean half-moons from leaves and carry the pieces away to line a nest cell. A mason bee may use mud to seal a cavity. A carpenter bee may use old or soft wood. Florida bees also differ in what they can use: some are generalists, visiting many kinds of flowers, while others are specialists that depend on certain native plants or plant families. A garden with only a few showy blooms may feed some insects for a week; a layered native planting can feed many kinds of bees across the year.
Wasps deserve the same second look. Bees and wasps are close relatives, both belonging to the insect order Hymenoptera, but they usually feed their young differently. Bees provision their larvae mostly with pollen and nectar. Many wasps provision their larvae with insects or spiders. That difference is one reason wasps matter so much in a garden. Adult wasps often visit flowers for nectar, so they can help move pollen, but their young are fed on prey: caterpillars, flies, beetle larvae, spiders, aphids, scales, whiteflies, and other small animals that would otherwise multiply unchecked. Some wasps, like mud daubers, are solitary and usually will not sting unless touched or trapped. Tiny parasitoid wasps often go completely unnoticed, yet they are among the garden’s most important pest-control workers. A parasitoid is an insect whose young develop on or inside another insect, eventually killing it. Some species of parasitoid are reared as biological control, especially for aphids and other pests due to their species specificity in selecting hosts. For gardeners, the practical lesson is simple: flowers are necessary, but flowers alone are not habitat. Native bees and many beneficial wasps need food and nesting places. In southern Florida, where the growing season is effectively year-round, aim for several kinds of flowers blooming at once and across the seasons. Small bees and many wasps do especially well on accessible flowers—flat, open, clustered, or short-tubed blooms where a small insect can stand and feed. Dune sunflower, seaside goldenrod, blazing star, sunshine mimosa, dotted horsemint, asters, blanketflower, blue porterweed, and other locally appropriate natives can all be part of that living buffet, depending on the site. Planting in clumps helps insects find flowers more easily, and using a range of heights creates more layers of forage.
Nesting habitat may be the missing piece in many pollinator gardens. A yard can be full of flowers and still offer nowhere for a bee to raise young. Many native bees nest below ground and need patches of bare or lightly covered, well-drained soil. Others use hollow stems, pithy stems, old wood, brush piles, or cavities. Leaving some stems standing through winter, keeping a little leaf litter, sparing a patch of open sand, and allowing some dead wood to remain where it is safe can matter as much as adding another flower. Bee hotels can help some ] cavity-nesting bees and wasps, but they need maintenance; natural nesting features often do the job better and with less risk of concentrating disease or parasites.
The best way to become less afraid of bees and wasps is to watch them closely enough to notice their habits. A metallic green sweat bee on a flower is not a honey bee. A carpenter bee hovering near you may be a male, and males cannot sting. Half-moon cuts on a leaf may be the careful work of a leafcutter bee, not a plant emergency. A wasp moving low over the lawn may be hunting grubs. Pinellas is crowded and paved, but it is not empty. The wild bees and wasps are already here; the question is whether our gardens leave them enough room to live.
All photos taken by Sidney Craig
A male Eastern Carpenter Bee (Xyclopa virginica) resting on creeping sage. These stingerless males will hover near an active nest entrance or wooden nesting area, chase rival males, and inspect passing insects, and try to intercept females as they leave or return to the nest. They visit flowers for nectar to fuel all that hovering and chasing, and in doing so, they may transfer pollen incidentally.
A Common Longhorn Bee (Melissodes communis) feeding on Pitted Stripeseed. Longhorn bees are ground nesters, often associated with sunflower-family flowers, including asters, daisies, sunflowers, and tickseeds, though M. communis has also been recorded using pollen from squash, mustard, blueberry, primrose, and other plant families.
A male aggregation of Zimmerman’s Mud Daubers settling down for the night (Chalybion zimmermanni). While solitary, males often come together to sleep. Male wasps cannot sting, because the stinger is derived from the female egg-laying structure. So although a cluster of slender metallic wasps may look alarming, a male aggregation is essentially a slumber party, not a threat.
Poey’s Furrow Bee (Halictus poeyi), one of Florida’s common small sweat bees, feasting on Starry Rosinflower. Poey’s Furrow Bee is usually described as primitively eusocial. One foundress begins the nest in sandy soil and acts as the main egg-layer. Her first daughters may remain and work, helping forage and care for the later brood. Unlike honey bees, though, these roles are not as fixed or extreme, and daughters may rear their own young as the season progresses. They are useful pollinators of wildflowers and garden plants, especially low, open flowers where small bees can easily reach the pollen and nectar.
A Red-and-Black Mason Wasp (Pachodynerus sp.) lining a cavity with mud to construct a nest. They are specialist predator of caterpillars, including pest groups such as armyworms, cutworms, and loopers. Adults feed on flowers for nectar and act as minor pollinators. Females can sting if handled or trapped, but they are solitary and do not defend a social colony the way yellow jackets or paper wasps do.