134 Jim Cane - Spring Bees

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:00:00] Spring time is a remarkable time for bees here in Oregon, and we know some of the familiar groups like the Mason bees and the Bumble bees, but there are so many other wonderful bees that are out and about, and to decode their mysterious life cycles, I have invited back onto the show for the third time, Dr. Jim Cane.

Dr. Cane, is a retired research entomologist. He was at the USDA Pollinator Insect Biology Management Systematic Research Lab in Logan, Utah, better known as the Bee Lab. And, Dr. Cane has done all sorts of work, comparative work, on solitary bees. 

He's interested in the management of these bees. He's interested in their ecology, where they go. And so this is going to be a great episode where you get a full picture of some of these wonderful critters that you can observe right in your backyard. They're out and about. Let's learn about our spring bees on PolliNation this week.

All right. Hey, Jim, how are you doing? 

Jim Cane: [00:01:11] Good, Andony, and how about you , in this surreal time?

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:01:15] Well, there is that, the Covid-19 situation, but fortunately out here in Oregon, we have some nice weather. We're in the 70s again. I understand in Utah though, you've had inches of snow still. 

Jim Cane: [00:01:29] Yeah. The early spring bees have been out, some early bloom but not today; we had four inches of snow. 

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:01:37] Well, that's why I wanted to talk to you today. We've had you on past episodes with that great episode with sunflower bees and squash bees, some of our summer bees, but I wanted to hear your thoughts on the other end of the spectrum; early spring, late winter. Especially here in Western Oregon, we've been seeing bees since February, March.  Talk a little bit about these bees that we see in the early spring, late winter. 

Jim Cane: [00:02:05] Yes. They're, amongst our native bees that are out early. I think your listeners are most likely to have noticed bumblebees that get out very early in the spring. And the more observant folks have noticed that every bumblebee that flies early in the spring is huge. Just a lumbering big animal. 

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:02:25] Why is that? 

Jim Cane: [00:02:26] And that's because they're all queens in waiting. They mated, they emerged last fall, and stayed with their nest. They mated last fall. That's why there's no male bumblebees flying now.

And they went to, they found a place that we don't understand very well, but they found some place to pass the winter. And now they're up and about and trying to choose a nest site, get it readied inside, and provision the first nest cell so they can get their first daughters produced. They get an early start.

As you probably know, bumblebees are particularly well adapted to cold weather. They're able to do, non-shivering heat-generation so they can warm up. And bumblebees may go all the way up to Ellesmere Island and up to Rockland in Sweden. So they're well adapted for being out early. 

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:03:22] Okay, and so they're ready to go as well.

They don't have a colony like the honeybees that are gonna be active through the whole winter, but they will be active early and kind of, I imagine, starting to start their nests. Do we know how long it takes before a queen emerges and she starts initiating a nest? 

Jim Cane: [00:03:44] Not in the wild because we don't know how to find her overwintering sites.

It's one of the biggest mystery of bumblebees. There's anecdotal accounts of where people have stumbled upon wintering sites in which there's multiple bumblebees tucked in, say under mosses on a North facing slope, but we really don't know how to find them, and yet that may be a critical time. We don't know. It may be a critical time in their overall biology: getting through the winter. Though, I suspect the critical time is trying to get a colony started in this highly variable weather in the springtime. 

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:04:25] I suppose,  that is a challenge because they may be able to forge a little bit, but they could run into, as we've had here, and as you're experiencing out there, it can get cold for a week at a time. And, they may have a very good forging day, but then they may have a number of days when they simply can't get out and flying. 

Jim Cane: [00:04:45] Yes, that's right. And, they're all ground... most all of our species, not all, but most of them are ground nesters. So with that cold, there's also frigid rain or snow melt, then now their nest cavity can be damp as well as cold, and they're trying to rear a larva and they typically incubate their larvae to some extent, just like a hen. It doesn't have to be that warm, but nonetheless, they try to, and if they didn't get enough nectar fuel or enough pollen and nectar in to raise that first egg or two. They could be in a pickle, and we've seen that here at times when they get lured out early in the spring, followed by the kind of bad weather you're describing... the rest of that season, there seems to be a paucity of bumblebee where the higher elevations, where they were kept in under snow during that temptation of warm weather, they did fine. 

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:05:48] Well, I often,  here in Oregon, and you've noticed this when you've been out here, or even in California, you can have some, bumblebee queens very early, in early February, even into January. And I often wonder if those queens go back into hibernation or if they... cause it seems like you can see them for quite a few months and you don't see any workers. I've often wondered if those first very, very early bumblebees... but I'm a suspecting your answer is we don't know. 

Jim Cane: [00:06:21] Yeah. It's a curiosity. And are they therefore, do they have a really long active life? Are they, are you watching mistakes? I don't know. It's, and they don't get especially say in Northern California, they don't get great reliable cues that spring has started. Now here in Northern Utah, there's a snow pack until late March, and so it's very evident that it's still winter, but Western Oregon, as you go down the coast, not great cues to know the timing of things for them. And is there a price paid or can they live with that? We don't know. 

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:07:05] Well, tell us a little bit about some of the early spring preferences for bumblebees. Do they have some plants that are there to meet them when they emerge? 

Jim Cane: [00:07:15] Most everything that's flowering. A superb plant for the yard, well, a good plant for the yard is golden currents. Which for nectar, is a great bumblebee plant and of course once apricots and another tree fruits come into bloom, bumblebees use those avidly. I don't see here in town, I don't see that many bumblebees that early. You were just telling me about out by The Dalles, which is a good observation that that bumblebees and some other bees were using delphinium. They'll use lupines, which are a pollen only flower. But, I guess I'm more focused on the solitary bees in my yard; I see them more reliably. 

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:07:57] Well, let's turn our attention to solitary bees . There's lots of solitary bees that we think... and, midsummer, we had the episode where we talked about the sunflower bees and the squash bees as some summer bees.

Tell us a little bit about some of the genera that are common first thing in the spring.

Jim Cane: [00:08:16] Yeah, first thing in the spring, actually, there's one more social group, which people probably wouldn't recognize as social, but the genus halictus: sweat bees. Genus halictus, and many of the little tiny sweat bees: the genus lasioglossum, were social just like a bumblebee, and they're out with the earliest of the spring bees.

They're flying here already. They've been flying here for two weeks now. Not today because of the snow. And a great place to look or, or to see solitary bees in your yard, but a great place to look to is pussy willow or any of the other willows. They're a magnet for all of the smaller bees for pollen and nectar. 

Besides those sweat bees, there's also the small carpenter bee. Which, you'll see on dandelion sometimes; the small carpenter bees hollow out pith in old, for instance, Himalayan Blackberry stems if they're broken and dead, or raspberry stems if they're broken and dead, or rose stems if they're broken and dead. And those, they also over winter as adults, as do those halictus that I mentioned. All these early spring bees overwinter as adults that we know of. 

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:09:30] Well, I suppose one difference with some of the social species, with some of the solitary bees, the first bees that you see are males, but with bumblebees and the social bees in halictidae, often they come pre-mated, I suppose; they're going into winter....

Jim Cane: [00:09:45] That's exactly right. And I suppose you could impress your friends. If you're, both interested in bees and tell her, well, I can tell from five feet away, look, this is a female or that bumblebee... and you'd be right. It's exactly right. 

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:10:06] And this is the case, even with those small carpenter bees, I know they're not... they have, some degree of helping one another. Are carpenter bees mated before the winter?

Jim Cane: [00:10:18] You know, I forget that, that's one I would have to check. I need to pay more attention to them. I maybe try rearing them and trying to split stems or I can watch what goes on with them.  Well certainly they're out foraging early in the spring.

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:10:35] But as you mentioned, for most of the bees that people are going to observe in the spring, they're going to notice, the males will be the first to come out. 

Jim Cane: [00:10:43] Yes. And that's because the males, they're not underground comparing notes with the females, about when should we emerge, and so sometimes their timing of when the males emerge and the females emerge isn't perfect. And since almost all of our solitary bees mate only once that if you're a male, you don't want to miss the dance. 

So you get out a little bit early. Sometimes you get out a lot early. But that's what they're after. And so these, like andrena for instance, that huge genus of the whole arctic, of the Northern hemisphere, and cooler areas, they're out now. Some of them. Some of them will be out much later, but some of them are out early spring; Blue Orchard Bees. 

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:11:31] Is there anything about the behavior of the males that gives them away; these first bees that come out? Is there something about how they... I've noticed sometimes they seem to be in groups or they seem to be hovering around things. Is there any kind of stereotypical behavior of male solitary bees? 

Jim Cane: [00:11:47] It varies with the species as to where they consider to be a good place to encounter females. Some of them will have, and this is true in andrena. I worked by young tango and Sweden. They'll have scent marked patrol areas, might call them territory, but they scent mark foliage and stems in a small area and that scent rides on the wind and virgin females will come to that and the males will mate with them.

There's also... I see there's a very early andrena here: andrea hippotes, which I'll see around, and every year it's the same thing. It's around the north side of our apple tree before it's even flowering. They'll be hovering around the twigs every year, and I don't know how they decide on where to be, but they do that.

And then there's those bees, especially for some species that have nesting aggregation, where the males will cruise the aggregation surface because that's the best place to be the first male to mate with a female that's emerging. It'd be right there. If there's scattered nests, that's not such a good strategy. 

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:13:01] Oh, I see. Because if you can, if you emerge there, presumably, you know where it is, cause you came out of it and you know,  evolution is sort of tended towards a behavior that sort of cruises there because your likelihood, so that sounds like a great strategy. You can just, as soon as she pops out, you can find her. 

Jim Cane: [00:13:19] Yeah. If you're looking at flowers, males of course, aren't collecting pollen. So if you see an individual with a pollen boat, you immediately know it's a female. And in addition, the males oftentimes are cruising. So it's just flower, flower, flower, flower, flower, flower, without much pause. And on occasion, a little stop to drink. So that can be a giveaway. 

Males of some genera, some andrena, the anthophora that you were talking about seeing earlier over, on the east side of the Gorge have a yellow face, and if it's either sex of a bee species that has a yellow face, it will be the male.

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:13:59] Oh, that's good to know. Okay, great. 

Jim Cane: [00:14:01] So that's handy; you have to get a little closer to see that. 

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:14:05] Tell us a little bit... so some of these bees that you've talked about, like the adrena , they nest in the soil, but I imagine, how do they know that it's springtime and, aren't some of them dug way deep down in the soil?

Jim Cane: [00:14:18] Yes, a lot of them go quite deep. Two to three feet is not uncommon, or 15 inches to say 30 inches. I worked with a bee in the Southeastern U.S. when I was there, that I dubbed the Southeastern Blueberry Bee and discovered that it was in fact an important pollinator of wild as well as commercial blueberries.

Also the ground nests are down a couple feet and it tended to emerge at about the right time for blueberry bloom, though blueberry bloom varied from year to year. But I could not come up with soil temperature markers, air temperature markers, nothing that was working with, climate modelers, nothing that was predictive.

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:15:05] They must be in their cells with the little scratch marks. It's day one, day two. 

Jim Cane: [00:15:09] It could be that. The other one that I wondered, maybe it's the first warm rain because warm rain... otherwise the temperature doesn't vary much at that depth. Year-round it's very constant, like the basement of a house, and I wondered maybe the first warm rain. Well, I couldn't make that work.

I've got, here in Logan. I know I have 22 years of tracking of first arrival of halictus rubicundus that they're testing irrigation each year and it varies over a six to seven week period from mid March to the end of April. And what are they paying attention to? It's obviously not a calendar or an internal clock that works like a calendar.

They're ground nesting so they can't use daylight. It's a real puzzle, which we would like to understand. Maybe it's an internal clock that is somehow thermally cubed, or maybe it's an internal clock that first... if you think of blueberries, for instance, they have to fulfill chill requirements first and only after they fulfilled chill requirements will they be responsive to warmer weather? So maybe it's something like that, which is a little bit complicated to model. 

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:16:26] Oh, how puzzling. I have also heard; I thought I heard a rumor once... someone suggesting that some of these bees move to the soil surface at some point. They're not just a straight dig up from there, where they've been nesting.

Is there any truth to that? 

Jim Cane: [00:16:43] I would like to know. I think it's a very, viable hypothesis and would help to explain how they know what's going on for air temperature when their nest cells are deep in the soil. Well you dig toward the surface in the fall, or maybe you have an internal clock that says: start digging towards the surface in late winter regardless, and then you sit there and wait for that soil to warm.

That could very well be. The challenge is you'd have to go back to the nesting aggregation, mark nests more or less, and then start shoveling around looking for bees before the flowering season. So it's not, I don't know of anyone who's undertaken that. But if you had a fairly dense nesting aggregation of a reliable early spring bee, it would be... you could really have an insight with that. That'd be fascinating to know. 

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:17:47] Oh, you always lay down some really great threads to pick up. If there are graduate students out there, these are some great questions to pursue. But, I did cut you off at one point. 

We were talking about mining bees and then you transitioned, you were going to talk about some of our stem nesting bees, and you did mention our small, small carpenter bees, but you also were about to talk about our Mason bees. Tell us a little bit about the megachilidae in the spring. 

Jim Cane: [00:18:11] Yeah. For those Mason bees or megachilids, especially the Mason bees and genus osmia... all osmia over winter as adults. Inside their cocoon, so they transformed to an adult in the cocoon in late summer, early fall, and then sit there as an adult waiting for spring.

The big advantage for early emergence is they've done all their development. So you have warm weather, all they need to do is chew out of the cocoon and they're ready to go. 

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:18:41] I remember this is in stark contrast. We had you on previously in another episode where you were talking about alfalfa leaf cutting bees where they don't go through winter, fully developed.

They really need some summer heat to finish the development of the next year. 

Jim Cane: [00:18:53] Yeah, they're a postading  larva or pre-pupa. It looks like a larva. Looks like a fully fed larva. That's their wintering stage, so then they've got to have enough warm to pupate, go through all the development that transforms a bland little grub, into a snazzy bee, and emerge. So they need warmer weather. 

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:19:16] Now. There must be... coming back, you were talking about the osmia, and the spring ones are overwintering as pretty much full adults. There must be some kind of a cost to that or is it... I guess the other point of it is they started in the spring, so they have the whole summer to finish development.

Do we suspect it's an evolutionary strategy? You sort of posed it as like, then they can get out first thing, or is it just a happy consequence? 

Jim Cane: [00:19:42] It certainly has its advantages for the early spring bees, I think, in that they can get out. No, the cost is the variable whether we were talking about. The advantage is there may be less competition for pollen and nectar because there's only a handful of bee species flying. And they can complete their nesting cycle before most of their nest predators or parasites become active, which is probably an advantage. And what gets curious is that not all osmia by any stretch of imagination, not all osmia are early spring bees. Most of them fly in spring, even early summer. And so they've got the challenge, and here they are committed adults who have to somehow suppress their metabolism even though the weather's warmed up so that they don't burn through their fat stores before it's time to emerge and we don't know how the majority of, osmia, how they manage to do that.

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:20:44] I guess what's implied in that is when you winter at some kind of immature stage, like a pre pupal stage, you can really shut things down in a way that you can't when you're an adult. Is that, is that what you're saying? 

Jim Cane: [00:20:56] Yeah, maybe the simple explanation is: Oh yes, you can as an adult, if you're one that winters as an adult. Certainly for bees who over winter as pre pupae.  Pre pupae, once they're adults, they're committed. They don't have much choice in the matter, but perhaps wintering as an adult... although they do like, blue orchard bees in their cocoons become more and more insistent on emerging as the spring progresses. 

If you have a managed population and you have them in a refrigerator, they'll even start emerging into refrigerator by late May or mid May. And if you try to hold them into June, you'll find that they all starved to death inside the cocoon. I've made that mistake. 

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:21:43] Okay, so these bees are nesting largely above ground, but I do, I sometimes wonder about that with some of the osmia, in some places where there's just not a lot of places to nest, if they also nest underground, but I imagine the bulk of them are nesting. Is that true? The bulk of them are nesting in some kind of a hollow stem? 

Jim Cane: [00:22:04] Probably the bulk are ground nesters. 

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:22:06] Oh really? 

Jim Cane: [00:22:06] Although my perspective is biased from the great basin where I know that to be the case. And there are a lot of species in a great basin. But, a lot of ground nests, but they're shallow ground nesters, only a few inches. So, they're perceiving what's going on with air temperature pretty well, I would guess. 

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:22:28] Okay. So either in a stem or shallow ground, they're still, they can, they can use that cue of the temperature and so a little bit, perhaps easier to understand what triggers their emergence. 

Jim Cane: [00:22:41] I'd agree with that. That makes good sense to me. 

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:22:45] Okay. So is there anything that can be said about some of our osmia and some of the plants that they prefer, or is it a diverse group and you can't do that? 

Jim Cane: [00:22:55] Yeah, they're a diverse group. There are some specialists, one that I encounter most often... there are several penstemon specialists in the inner mountain West and the Rockies, that's all they go to for pollen and nectar.

But a lot of them might have a preference for a family or two of plants. Like, there's two osmia, one gets when they're trap nesting for blue orchard bees, you also get osmia californica and osmia montana. Like sized bees, same size holes, they'll mix some chewed up leaf with the mud that they nest with and their provisions are bright orange because they like the spring composite. 

So they'll work dandelion, they'll work Balsamroot, the work mule's ears. So they're somewhat specialists, but a lot of them aren't specialists, which is handy; they stay in your own yard. I know for my blue orchard bees, especially their early flying males, they do well.

They get nectar from squill, which is a little blue flowered bulb, from grape hyacinths, from willows, which actually are important food for blue orchard bees in the wild. 

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:24:08] You know, we had an episode recently, Lila Westreich. I don't know if you've met her; she's a graduate student at University of Washington, and she's working in Seattle.

She was going through the pollen loads of lignaria nests in urban settings, and she was surprised at how much willow pollen there was. 

Jim Cane: [00:24:23] Yeah. Which takes some doing to find it in an urban setting. I would guess there... well, I don't know. It could be planted pussy willows or perhaps there's enough drainages that they can find it.

Yes, they do like willow a lot. They like, red bud, surprisingly. Perhaps they like, of course the rosaceous tree fruit that everyone has that they use them for, for pollination. And they also in our area like hydrophyllum, which it's in a water leaf family.  

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:24:56] Oh, for heaven's sakes. We've been talking about a study that we're doing in The Dalles and there was quite a bit. In any place there was a little bit of moisture, and a little bit of shade, and it was really... they really liked it. 

Jim Cane: [00:25:11] Yeah. It's very popular with them and over some of the maples, including your big leaf or big tooth maple grows along your water courses out there. Big leaf, yeah. They flock to that, and of course you don't know it because the bloom is up 30, 50 feet above the ground, but they're up there getting it.

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:25:32] Do we know if they're using nectar or pollen from maple? I've often wondered. 

Jim Cane: [00:25:36] Both. I know they're using pollen. I presume they're getting the nectar as well. They're overlooked because they're not very showy flowers. But in fact, maples are an, are an important one for, for a number of early spring bees.

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:25:51] Well, you know, one common theme I'm noticing in some of these plant recommendations are shrubs. It seems like shrubs and trees, seem to be very, very important for some of these early spring bees. 

Jim Cane: [00:26:02] Yeah. Blueberries are a handy one that are also nice for people to have. Or wildlife, either one. Or blueberries, probably because the shrub are so reliable.

I mean, pussy willow never skips a year. Pussy willow that I've ever seen here never gets frozen out. So every year it's a reliable bloomer and that's a great thing for the bees. 

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:26:27] Okay. That's, that's a great tip. So we've covered some of our stem nesting bees. Are there any other species you, you'd like to draw attention to?

Jim Cane: [00:26:36] Oh, you were mentioning seeing over again on the east side of the Gorge you were seeing anthophora and habropoda, or at least anthophora. 

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:26:49] Anthophora. And I know that on the coast though, we have those, we have a habropoda on the dunes as well.

Jim Cane: [00:26:55] Yeah. And a number of those get started really early. They're difficult to tell the two genera apart unless the species have distinctive attributes. They look like worker bumblebees, you know that. You've seen them. And yet, they're flying at a time of year when there aren't going to be worker bumblebees; they're going to be all queens. And so it's one way you can identify them. They also carry their pollen dry in the hind legs. But both of them are solitary, fast flyers, powerful flyers. And they're ground nesters. 

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:27:33] I think I was describing to you where I had seen them was on Larkspur and they were zipping around like they were, they were peculiar in their speed. 

Jim Cane: [00:27:43] Yeah, very fast. Very much of a contrast of bumblebees, who have a kind of a deliberate nature about their foraging. 

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:27:52] That's very polite. 

Jim Cane: [00:27:55] Yeah. But especially the males of anthophora and habropoda, they dart. There's no question, but even in cool weather, they are fast flyers. 

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:28:08] Okay. So this gives us a nice... have we missed any... the other thing I often notice in the spring is those nesting beds. When the mining bees get started, seeing the cuckoos show up. Especially here in Western Oregon, I actually, I do a lot of "ask the expert," on the extension network, and I think I've had three requests on, mining bees in lawns and  whether mowing the lawn will disturb them or information on them. 

Jim Cane: [00:28:38] Yeah. For the cuckoos. So, the most obvious one that people can learn to recognize and pretty ubiquitous is the genus nomada where cuckoos are cleptoparasites on the genus andrena and there's a lot of them. They're typically bright orange, sometimes reddish, sometimes with yellow markings, and look very waspy. And they slowly cruise over the ground surface because they're hunting for nest of their particular species of andrena. So quite distinctive to see and the behavior is distinctive as well. 

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:29:19] Are all our mining bees, nest in aggregations or is that just, very specific?

Jim Cane: [00:29:25] Most of the ones that have been studied well, nest in aggregations because that's how people can find them. I can get sufficient numbers to generalize about the species. But by the same token, most of the species haven't been studied, and so I might guess that that's because all those other species are solitary nesters and don't aggregate that much.

And it's a spectrum in aggregation from pretty dense to no, from all of the extremes. Hundreds of thousands to five or 10 nests, to two nests, to you can only find one nest most of the time, but occasionally you find a few together. So it's a spectrum, and we know less about the ones who are scattered nests.

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:30:15] Well, so how would you answer the question: if you're a homeowner and you really love bees and you notice you've got a nesting bed on your lawn, but you do need to keep your lawn care going, do you have any recommendations? Does the mowing disturb the bees? What might they do? And the other question I have is with these cuckoo bees: do the nests persist over time or are they kind of, do they go up and down? 

Jim Cane: [00:30:42] Certainly in terms of lawn, especially if you do your own lawn maintenance, your own mowing and such, then if you mow when the bees aren't active so early in the morning or dusk. In either case, everybody will be home and in your mowing, you're going to transform the appearance of things somewhat for their orientation cues. But they're all going to emerge from that nest to your newly mowed lawn to a new orientation flight. Learn the new cues at that time and, be able to come back home just fine.

And by the same token, if you have to irrigate your lawn, if you can water at night, or you can water earlier or late in the day for the same reason, these are all home and they can dig their way out from however it gets muddy. So both of those things... 

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:31:40] The irrigation could block the hole and be difficult to locate again.

Jim Cane: [00:31:46] Yeah. If they're outside the nest, then they've got to find a plugged hole and know where to dig. But if they're inside the nest, then the only way out is up.  And they can dig their way through the mud and, and do an orientation flight. Now that their soil heap is changed in appearance and know exactly how to get back home.

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:32:07] Okay. So my second question I have is with all these cuckoo bees, these, nest parasites. Does the colony eventually crash? If somebody has one on their lawn and it disappears, could it be because of that kind of thing? 

Jim Cane: [00:32:20] That would be, that's actually very worth monitoring because it is debated to what extent cuckoo bees are simply a burden on the nesting aggregation, or whether they can cause an extinction.

I have seen cuckoo bees of a ground nesting leaf cutting bee, which worked cranberries and commercial bogs in New Jersey, and the aggregation we worked with had over 10,000 bees, myself and Dan Schiffbauer. And over the course of five years of working with the bee, and its pollination and all, we noticed that the cleptoparasite coelioxys is becoming more and more abundant every year.

And by the time we tried to rescue the population, the only thing that emerged the final year was coelioxys. It's also the first time aggregations of that bee have been reported and maybe I know why now. That when they aggregate, they are a sitting target and eventually are eliminated. And so those that have scattered nest fare better perhaps.

But that one case, I know for a fact that the cleptoparasite coelioxys wiped out the megachile aggregation. 

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:33:39] Okay. That's some great information. I think people are really curious because it's easy to spot the nesting beds. You can see the cuckoos and, we may have to think about how to follow some of these beds up. If you do have one on your lawn. We may be knocking on your doors at some point, at least around Corvallis. 

Jim Cane: [00:33:58] It's not that hard to track. Pick a particular time of day and once females are nesting and you just say, okay, I'm going to count all the cuckoo bees and all the host bees that I see in five minutes and write it down in my annual diary and just track that for five or 10 years. And see there's, in Great Britain, there's a number of  for better lack of a better word, amateurs, natural historians, people who have other day jobs who report that kind of stuff in publication, and some of it is the only observations we have. It's very valuable. 

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:34:37] That's great. Well, moving on to what people can do. So just thinking about, if you, if you're a wood land manager or you have a farm, or you're a gardener, what are some of the... we've already talked about some of the things that can be done.

And you were talking about willows you were talking about things like red bud. Some of these are our maples. What are some of the other plants that people might consider to sort of, serve this broad range of, early spring, native bees? 

Jim Cane: [00:35:05] Yeah, and my perspective is from here in the inner mountain west, so over in Northern Utah, so not all the plants will apply. And then you've got some over there. All members of the blueberry family are good choices, but you've got acid soils where they prosper, where if we have alkaline soil. But blueberries in general are great bee plants all around the Northern hemisphere. Blueberries, cranberries, oh, what am I trying to think of... manzanitas. All those are great bee plants. And you'll notice that a lot of the visitors of those use their flight muscles to buzz the flowers to cause the pollen to rain out of the anthers. It's very much like bumblebees do with tomatoes in your garden. Same, same action, same result.

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:35:57] This actually reminds me one bee I think that we missed is... we talked about the sunflower bees, but it has a relative, a spring relative. 

Jim Cane: [00:36:08] Oh, some of the jet bees in the, well, not melissodes but... Yes, eucera are not the earliest spring bees that I know of, but they're definitely out on the spring floor and eucera also look a little bit bumblebee-like perhaps, look a little bit like an anthophora perhaps. I have mistaken on sometimes on the wing.

And you and I were talking about before the program: the male eucera however, are very distinctive. Their common name is Longhorn bees, and that's because the male's antennae are oh two, three times longer than the females antennae. They are long enough that they reach back to the abdomen. They usually have a yellow face as well.

And so if you see a bee the size of a squash bee, but in the early spring, and it's got long, long antenna like that, it's going to be a species of eucera. Which we have in the great basin, six to eight species that are common. And some others that I don't know as well. 

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:37:18] I mentioned them because I have seen them on, flowers with long corollas, but I've also seen them on manzanitas. And I'm not sure if that's just a coincidence. All the males just looking for nectar anywhere they can find that.

Jim Cane: [00:37:30] Well, the whole heath family, the blueberries, the manzanitas and all, are unusual amongst buzz pollinated flowers in that they have nectar too. Most buzz pollinated flowers are nectarless. 

But in the case of the blueberry family, they have nectar as well. And so males might visit those flowers just to get a drink or to search for females. Females will get a drink and get pollen. They don't have to have a second hope for nectar, so I can imagine them visiting those. I've also seen them on occasion, large numbers of one species of male eucera at Balsamroot flower, which you know is a shallow.

It's a composite head, but they're walking on what they're forging at. So it's a little bit tricky with those long tongues. But if it's the only nectar show in town, that's where they will get their nectar. 

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:38:26] Okay. So we did talk about plants in the blueberry family shrubs. We've got lots of them that grow out here.

Are there any other plants that you... I guess the one thing I did wonder about was spring composites. In a lot of the east of the cascades, we have Balsamroot. Are there other... but mostly I think about those composites being summertime composite. Is there any certain composites that people can incorporate.

Jim Cane: [00:38:48] Yes, that's right. The composites are primarily summertime flowers, especially the annual ones. The perennial ones, some can be in the spring, so like, you know, your dandelion or your balsamroot that comes back from a tap root. And so sort of like bees wintering as adults, they can get going early. But those, and a little bit later mule's ears, which is the genus wyethia, are the earliest ones I can think of other than the dandelion. Otherwise, most composites come on later and are great summer plants for bees. 

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:39:24] Is Balsamroot difficult to grow? 

Jim Cane: [00:39:28] It's slow to grow. I tried some seed here at the house and I got them to a two leaf stage after five years. And that was sagittata which forms the huge plants.

There's also one: hookeri which is a smaller rosette of leaves that I'm told some growers manage to get them to flower in their fifth year from seeding. So they might have a chance, and that once you've got them, they'll bloom every year. They're very reliable. Another one, maybe you have to be a bit of a connoisseur to grow them, but I've come to like the biscuit roots. 

And I've transplanted some of their tap roots or bald like roots, and I've got them coming up right now in the yard. But they're not particularly showy. They're, I don't know, they're an acquired taste. They've got, a flower head, like a small, queen Anne's lace or carrot flower head.

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:40:28] And, they're the ones that I've seen at least, in the mid Columbia region, they're small. The flowers are really small, but, you attract some really interesting tiny bees to the inclamations. 

Jim Cane: [00:40:40] I have a paper coming out for, actually it is out for four of the biscuit roots species and the great basin.

Which we worked at in and out of fires, and they're very fireproof by the way, for wildfires. And they attracted more species of andrena, 40 some odd species, than any other flowering plant species yet found in the world. Andrena just swarm it. And yet, only one of the andrena is possibly a specialist on lomatius. All the rest are generalists, but they gravitate towards it. 

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:41:17] What are they getting from it? It's such a small little flower.

Jim Cane: [00:41:20] Pollen and nectar. It's pretty fast when they collect the pollen and small amounts of nectar, but it's a reliable bloomer and they do very well with it. I was surprised how few of them were specialists.

I was expecting a number of specialists given the circumstances, but that wasn't true. 

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:41:41] Is lomatium a difficult plant to grow, the biscuit roots? 

Jim Cane: [00:41:45] From seed, it's in the same family as horseradish and, parsnip carrot for that matter. And for those folks that like to grow parsnip you know, that the seed only is viable for a year.

It's a funny seed. And so biscuit root, you can grow them from seed, but you need to plant them in the fall. Try to hold onto them until the spring or til the following year and they'll all be dead. I've had better luck digging up bulbs, or taproots I mean, not bulbs... digging up tap roots. If it's one of the big species, look for young plants because the tap root... a former technician of mine dug one big one, and it was the size of, Oh gosh, what would it be? Somewhere between a grapefruit and a volleyball. 

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:42:37] Oh my goodness. 

Jim Cane: [00:42:37] It was huge. So go for the smaller ones, and then you'll actually be able to dig it out without damaging it in less than an hour.

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:42:47] Well, these are some great suggestions. Do you have any other? 

Jim Cane: [00:42:49] Oh yeah, yeah. One other spring bulb that I've come to like a lot, and I've been studying it as well, is camas lily. And bees will use both the wild plants and they'll also use the cultivated plants. And it's a pretty flower and a diversity of bees use them.

You have a faculty member at one of the smaller schools in Western Oregon who's been studying them for a number of years. She's probably the world's expert on them.  Camas lily is a nice one to have in the yard. And these bees will like them. On the other hand, bees will use them some, but little but daffodils, tulips, crocus. Bees will use them some in a pinch, but, but they really aren't, workhorse flowering species for the early spring bees. 

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:43:39] Yeah, I've been noticing, there's a really nice native plant garden close to campus here. And I've got Mason bees there, and I notice they're using them. I'm not sure if they're collecting pollen or just collecting nectar.

Jim Cane: [00:43:53] Oftentimes I think they're just getting nectar from them. Where they're native, a fair number of those are beetle pollinated from what I'm told, in Turkey and other places. 

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:44:05] So we've got some bulbs. We've covered some forbes, and some shrubs, and some trees. So there any other go-to plants that you find very reliable, maybe for people who are looking for a less complicated plant to grow?

Jim Cane: [00:44:22] I would say pussy willows, the only thing is you've got to keep it pruned back, make it keep it attractive. And golden current I like, and the fruit is good on golden current, very good eating, especially in jellies. 

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:44:36] Well, we're really fortunate here at OSU, the USDA plant,  they have a current breeding program, and I always love going there to see the bumblebees, and they certainly are having a great time going from flower to flower.

Jim Cane: [00:44:50] They're a nice one. And you'll see those out in nature too. Well, I've seen them along those big stands along the snake river .

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:44:58] Small willows.  I guess some, one of the things with willows is that if people don't want a huge plant in their yard. Is there a, are there's some smaller willow varieties?

Jim Cane: [00:45:09] There are smaller varieties. I don't know to what extent they're available commercially. But yes, there's a number of alpine and arctic willows that are ankle high.  I don't know if they're in the trade or not. That'd be worth looking for. I know there's some blueberries that are half height blueberry. That would work well if you have acid soils.

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:45:34] And certainly something like kinnikinnik can make really nice ground cover. 

Jim Cane: [00:45:40] Really pretty. I think. Those would be one of the most things that you would seed. Of course end up flowering, but at least in places that have snow packs like we do, anything that gets seeded can't flower very early. For the most part. It seems that unfortunately, that what can get flower in earlier months, things that started are weeds. So bur buttercup can bloom very early, but it's not desirable.

But otherwise, something that's perennial is your best bet. And I don't know, you have other things over there like daphne and rhododendrons that might also be good. And of course apricots and all the tree fruits like apples or crab apple, even ornamental crab apples are great bee plants. 

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:46:34] I'd say one of the things I've really thought for Mason bees works really well is Rosemary, it's early enough that it's blooming before emergence and it just carries you all the way through to almost, I mean, it's still blooming now. It's been blooming for a month and it'll continue to go.

Jim Cane: [00:46:48] Wow. That's a real contrast with places like here that have a snow pack. Our rosemary's a summer plant. 

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:46:55] I have friends who are on the Shuswap Lake area of British Columbia can't grow it. It can take over, but just having something that blooms before the Mason bees come out , so it's already got a sizeable amount of bloom on it.  I sometimes, we were talking about this at the break, before the interview: retaining Mason bees. I sometimes wonder places that are successful, have a good amount of bloom already there, but I'm not sure, as you said there's...

Jim Cane: [00:47:21] I can imagine that would help. And it only needs to be nectar plants early on just to keep the bees going until the main, like the orchard crop comes into bloom with pollen. But early on, if they can get nectar, and in the case of the females, some pollen, they do need some pollen to mature their eggs, but nothing like their pollen needs for provisioning the  nest cells.

So henbit is one, I don't know if it grows over there in lawns or not. skewed malaria, I think is the genus perhaps. 

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:47:53] I don't know it. 

Jim Cane: [00:47:54] But that's one that bees can use. That's the thing is we don't have it here, but I had it in Alabama and we had it in New York state. It's not the greatest smell when you cut it, but it blooms very early in the year and bees like it quite a lot.

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:48:06] I know it. Yes. I've seen it. I've seen it growing, in some orchard floors. And, that's one of the flowers that I saw. I was able to see some anthophora on.

Jim Cane: [00:48:17] Ah, okay. Yep. Anthophora and habropoda used it in Alabama. Especially the males; they'd have little purple stripe on their face. The anthers hit them as they probe for nectar. 

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:48:30] Huh. Well, this has been great. Thank you so much for all these suggestions and thanks for introducing us to the spring bees. We will have to get you back on. I think this is the third episode, we love having on the show. But thank you so much for being generous with your time and giving us a little glimpse into all these wonderful bees that are flying around right now. 

Jim Cane: [00:48:51] Well, I'm very happy to provide that and we have so many people over there in Oregon group got a passion for bees that to make sure that we feed that passion.

Okay, so keep an eye out in your yard, keep your eye out in the park. Have a camera at hand, maybe a vile to put bees into. And see what you've got cause there's discoveries to be made. 

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:49:16] Thank you so much Jim, and stay safe. 

Jim Cane: [00:49:19] Very good, Andony. Bye now.