Have you ever seen males of a solitary bee species sleeping?

During the night the females of solitary bee species usually sleep or rest inside the nest (made mainly in wood or soil), taking care of her brood, of course. But what about the males?

The life of males of bee species is generally a little known. After emerging, males begin to search females for mating. This process consists in intercepting the female during her flight or mating directly on the flower while the female is foraging. Besides, the males also interact with each other while delimiting their territories. However, while females are resting in her nest what do they use to do?

They also rest! Instead of resting inside the nest, they usually do in flowers or flower buds as you see in the picture.

Here are two Lanthanomelissa males resting. These were sleeping during the morning...

The photo was captured in Rio Grande do Sul (Pro-Mata) in december 2010.

Wild pollinators x Honey Bees

Last week an interesting Science article was released with some brazillian researchers as co-authors and it had a good repercussion on one of the main news website of our country (see here). I think this is awesome for spreading the importance of pollination studies and the conservation of wild bees.

Wild pollinators (regarding mainly wild bees) are not popularly known and need conservation and outreach programs.

People just know the bee species that produce honey as honey bees, the most known. Media is not interested in publishing this kind of subject and due to it people knowledge doesn't comprise an important issue like that.

The specialized literature has published a lot of studies about problems with the presence of the generalist honey bees (and their races) in many types of landscape. We know that honey bees are good pollinators for many crops and wild plant species, but the wild ones are better. Besides we have concerned about competition between them and honey bees (see my article about this here).

We also know that honey bees are economically important in honey production and produce it more than stingless bees, for example.

However, it is a good time to obtain more data and get them into practice.