My mother sent me a photo of this bee from a petunia flower in her garden not long after moving to Papamoa this past summer. I initially thought it was a hoverfly as I couldn’t see two pairs of wings (flies only have one pair). Some hover flies protect themselves from predators by mimicking wasps by having yellow and black stripes. Similarly, both males and females wool carder bees will hover near flowers similar to hoverflies.
However this insect looked a little “fatter” than the hoverfly and the interrupted bands of bright yellow and black were more pronounced. A little more research and I discovered it was first identified in Napier and Nelson in 2006 as the European wool carder bee or Anthidium manicatum. It is now widespread throughout New Zealand, including Papamoa!
Wool carders aren’t hive dwellers, but solitary bees that live in holes or cracks they find in wood or stems or in the ground. Who knows how it arrived here, but just like the exotic European honey bee, it has plenty of exotic flowers to feed on so it is likely to stay.
It is native to Europe, northern Africa and Asia, but now also in the USA after being identified around 1963 (and Canada and Brazil).
Males are larger than the females, measuring 14-17 mm and are highly aggressive against other males of the same species and other nectar seeking insects visiting flowers in its territory. A dominant male will hover and dart with the deftness of a drone, picking off rivals such as competing honey bees who enter a flower patch reserved exclusively for him and his female companions.
They will fight to defend a food source for their harem of females. Of course, they don’t do this to be chivalrous, but for breeding rights. They harass them by holding them immobile and repeatedly attempting to mate. For most species of bees, it’s rare to witness a pair mating in the wild, but it’s hard not to see wool carder bees mating if they’re out and about.
The male wool carder bees main fighting tactic is to fly directly at the opponent and knock them off their perch, followed by a high-speed chase if they don’t get the message. They don’t have a stinger, but they do have barbs on the tip of their abdomen to assist in combat. They’re fearless fighters and don’t hesitate to take on bumble bees that are much larger than themselves.
The female measures 11-13 mm and can occasionally be seen ‘carding’ fibres from plants to make linings for their nests. The bee visits a variety of different plant species but you will see them on plants like petunia, rosemary and especially lamb's ear. The plant hairs are combed from the plant by using special rows of hairs on their legs and this is carried back to the nest in a ball held under the body. They build these nests in existing holes in timber, masonry, soil, wood piles, buildings or plant stems.
Typically by early evening, the females stop feeding and crawl under a leaf and scrape off some fuzz into a little cotton ball. They will take this home and line their nests with it. If you listen, you can hear them scratching.
Our Ministry of Primary Industries says that at the time of its first detection here it was considered unlikely that the wool carder bee would have any noticeable or significant impact to New Zealand’s apicultural industry. Since then, no impacts have been observed or reported. Other bees are seldom injured by the wool carder bee’s aggressive behaviour and they usually just fly away after an attack.
I am not aware of any studies to evaluate the potential impacts of the wool carder bee in New Zealand. Potential impacts may include competition with native pollinators for floral resources and nest sites, disruption of pollination of native plants and the pollination and further spread of exotic weeds. The solitary nature of this species suggests that it will not form large, dense or problem populations that could cause issues.
If you happen to see this bee in your garden over summer, don’t harm it as it does provide some useful pollination in between their sessions of fighting, lovemaking, and carding.
]]>What are bees?
Bees belong to the Hymenoptera, insects that include ants and wasps. The ancestral bee appeared about 120 million years ago when carnivorous wasps began eating plant pollen instead of meat. (So in essence, a bee is actually a vegetarian wasp).
This new way of life for the bee was so successful that bees evolved into around 30,000 species over millions of years. The perfect partnership ensued, where flowering plants provided food for bees and bees move their pollen from one plant to another (pollination). Hence the scientific name for bees is Anthophila, which means "flower lovers".
We all know the honey bee and that it operates in a colony, but most species of bee are in fact solitary. An adult female finds a suitable site and constructs a nest. She mates with a male to fertilise her eggs, then works alone as she builds her nests in a protected position, like in soil, sand, or a hollow plant stem.
The bee collects food to provision each cell by collecting pollen and nectar to form the larval food. She then deposits an egg on the provisions and closes the cell. She repeats the process as many times as she can before she dies. Her egg hatches and the resulting larva consumes the food, grows, pupates and emerges as an adult to complete the next circle of life. In a colony, different bees perform specialised roles, whereas solitary bees must do all the tasks themselves.
Bees get all their nutritional requirements from flowers. Pollen is especially important for developing larval bees as they need high levels of protein to grow their bodies from egg to adult.
Depending on the bee species, she can either carry the bee pollen back on a patch of special hairs usually under the abdomen (scopa), a few carry it back internally, and others in a pollen basket (a corbicula) a concave area surrounded by hairs on the hind legs.
What is bee pollen?
For over 120 millions years, bees have been collecting nectar and bee pollen from flowers as a complete diet that gave them everything they required to survive. Bee pollen normally contains about 20-35% protein, depending on the plant species.
Pollen from a diversity of sources is optimal for the bee diet. Pollen from different species of plants contains different types of nutrients, but the combination of different pollens creates a more balanced bee diet, producing bees that are healthier, longer-living, and some believe, even smarter.
(It is interesting to note, where honey bees have been confined to a monoculture, like the almond orchards in California, honey bees struggle to survive.)
Bee pollen boasts an impressive nutritional profile, and while dependent on the plant source and season collected, on average it contains over 250 biologically active substances, including proteins, carbs, lipids, fatty acids, vitamins, minerals, enzymes and antioxidants. Bee pollen granules consist of approximately:
Studies have linked bee pollen and its compounds to health benefits such as decreased inflammation, as well as improved immunity, managing menopausal symptoms and wound healing.
My father produced a honey and pollen spread back in the 1980's and remembered it didn't taste as good as it was nutritionally, so recently decided to work on perfecting the best recipe for its taste and healthy benefits.
Ginger Bee "Healthy" is one of our most popular products, a smooth-tasting product where the bee pollen naturally offsets the sweetness of the honey, the warming ginger finished with the sharpness of turmeric for a very nicely balanced flavour.