No Sweat!

Okay, everybody in the pool!

That means bees, too?

It does.  Sweat bees.

You may have noticed the tiny bees--common name “sweat bees” from the family Halictidae--in your swimming pool or pollinating your flowers.

They're attracted to perspiring skin (thus the name “sweat bees”). Sometimes when you're splashing around in the pool, you'll feel a sharp but harmless sting.

UC Davis emeritus professor Robbin Thorp, who researches native pollinators, identified this one (below) as a Lasioglossum  (Dialictus) sp. female. 

A dull metallic gray, brown or blackish in color, they're found throughout California. They nest in ground burrows.  

If you want an excellent book on providing native habitat for these native bees,  you'll want to obtain a copy of Farming for Bees: Guidelines for Providing Native Bee Habitat on Farms, written by Mace Vaughan, Matthew Shepherd, Claire Kremen and Scott Hoffman Black and published by the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, an international, nonprofit, member-supported organization dedicated to preserving wildlife habitat through the conservation of invertebrates.  For more information, contact the Xerces Society  4828 SE Hawthorne Blvd., Portland, Ore. 92715 or access the Xerces Web site.

They write: "North America is home to about 4000 species of native bees, most of which go overlooked. These insects are not the familiar European honey bee, nor are they wasps or other aggressive stinging insects."

With the decline of honey bees, expect to see more reliance on native bees.

Excerpts from Farming for Bees:

• If enough natural habitat is close by, native bees can provide all of the pollination necessary for many crops
• Fifty-one species of native bees have been observed visiting watermelon, sunflower or tomato in California
• Native pollinators have been shown to nearly triple the production of cherry tomatoes in California