Bees attacking honey bees - Ask Extension
Hello,We always have many honey bees visit our lambs ear in the summer. In the last few days, another type of bee (or bee look alikes) that have thin ...
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Bees attacking honey bees #703945
Asked July 22, 2020, 12:16 PM EDT
Hello,
We always have many honey bees visit our lambs ear in the summer. In the last few days, another type of bee (or bee look alikes) that have thin black and bright yellow stripes on its bottom (and not a fuzzy bottom), black head and black neck, of a smaller size, and with a completely different flying pattern (hovers, then quickly darts to another place and hovers and pauses, then repeats, and its wings move similar to a hummingbird's) has been in the lambs ear patch and attacking the honey bees gathering nectar. Our lambs ear are now devoid of honey bees. We looked online and couldn't find anything about this type of bee/imposter or how to get rid of it. Do you have any ideas of what it is and how we can control it? Or should we call a pest control service?
Also, we find a handful of dead bees in our driveway throughout the summer. We haven't used pesticides or herbicides in or around our lawn in over a decade. Is finding dead bees normal?
Thank you!
Nicki
Arapahoe County Colorado
Expert Response
That is the European wool carder bee. A sheet on this bee, including discussion of its habits (such as defending territory and killing intruder bees) is at: https://webdoc.agsci.colostate.edu/bspm/arthropodsofcolorado/WoolCarderBee.pdf
Thank you! Are they pollinators? Are they harmful or should we let them be?
Wool carder bees are pollinators. And several of them are native pollinators to Colorado. And aside from the males chasing and occasionally harming some other bees their activities mostly involve quietly collecting nectar/pollen to raise some young and pollinating the flowers as they go about that.
This particular wool carder bee, as well as the honey bee, are not native to North America. We have 946 species of bees in Colorado and about 940 of them are natives.
This particular wool carder bee, as well as the honey bee, are not native to North America. We have 946 species of bees in Colorado and about 940 of them are natives.
Whitney, that's all very good to know. We had come to the conclusion that we should just leave them because we do see them pollinating, and the other types of bees have moved on to the pumpkin and squash flowers anyway, and the bumblebees seem unaffected. We will probably reduce our enormous patch of lambs ear and put in other non-hairy pollinator friendly plants so there's more for all types of bees. Thank you again for your advice!
