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A small white, plastic cup sloshing with diluted dish soap lured and drowned a dozen bees. As the high noon sun beat down, native bee monitor Sam Droege, in a brimmed straw hat, swirls the cup and its lifeless contents.
More lasioglossums, he notes, among other bee species, a few bee parasites and a small wasp. Fifteen feet away, he stoops to pick up a similar cup painted light blue inside.
Droege's bees aren't the European honey-makers whose hives have come under attack by mites so small that they attach themselves to honeybees' trachea.
His bees are native to Maryland and North America, pollinating long before Europeans imported colonizing honeybees. Native bees range from annoying sweatbees to furry bumblebees to iridescent bees to bees that look to us like flying ants or tiny flies.
We know so little about these pollinators, Droege says, that we don't even know who lives in our backyard.
Droege, a wildlife biologist for the U.S. Geological Survey, estimates some 350 varieties of native bees call Maryland home. Other estimates place 4,000 native species in North America. Their number may be declining, but nobody knows, and few care.
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The Local Buzz
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On the job with native bee expert Sam Droege
By Carrie Madren
Bay Weekly, 7/12/07
Straight to the Source
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