Tag Archives: Sweat Bee

2022

D-8 traveling to las Cuevas research station

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Hi everyone!

Today has been a super long day! We woke up at our normal time (7 am breakfast) and ever since then we did not stop. After eating breakfast we all hurried to the boat, which we rode to Belize City. It took about 4 hours. Although it was a long ride, I can’t complain, the views were gorgeous! Also, thankfully most of us took Dramamine to avoid any chance of seasickness and it appears to have worked, as no one experienced nausea this time around! In fact, most of our crew was able to sleep throughout most of the ride!

After getting back to Belize City we ate at Calypso, a restaurant near where we were dropped off. The food was quite good, I got the pasta primavera! One interesting thing about the pasta was that it had a lot of pickles, something I hadn’t seen before in a pasta primavera; typically I’m not a fan of pickles, yet I think it made the pasta more flavorful!

Also, I thought for the remainder of this trip I would no longer see mention of my aquatic taxa, piscivorous fish, yet it seems like mentions of the lion fish continue haunting me.

After eating at calypso we quickly headed out to get to the Tropical Education Center, where we are spending the night. Yet, before getting to the TEC we made a stop a local store to get supplies for our time in the rainforest! Personally, the only thing I needed was bug spray, yet how could I say no to cookies, so I got some of those as well!

After our stop we then made it to the TEC where Dr. Aravalo talked to us about the Scarlet Macaw. The manner in which he presented his data made me very emotional for some reason. I was hoping to ask more questions, yet today we were on a roll and we could not prolong our Q&A for too long. After our talk with Dr. Aravalo we got dinner, out of which my favorite was the cake! After dinner we headed straight to the Zoo, which was a quick drive from the TEC. At the Zoo we got to see many of the nocturnal animals in the exhibit including the Jaguar and the Tapir and even a four-eyed possum (which was not a part of the exhibit).

I almost forgot to mention that earlier in the day, when we arrived at the TEC I saw really beautiful flowering plants, yet no bees nearby to indicate bee pollination.

At night while writing my blog I was a little sad I had not gotten to see bees today, yet things often occur when you least expect it! Tonight while showering I actually got to see my taxa. It wasn’t near any plants it was hovering over the light of my shower stall! Although it was too far up to get a good look I believe it was a Concave Nose Striped Sweat Bee.

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Day 3: Bee sighting!

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We had the most bee sightings yet today. Sweat bees, Carpenter bees, Honey bees, and Stingless bees. Carpenter bee was spotted during noon near muddy water on the Maya Trail. Its behavior was interesting in that it did not seem to be pollinating bees but was sensing around the dirt where it was moist but not covered in water. Its large size and distinct, loud buzzing sound cannot be mistaken.

Large (3/4″) Carpenter Bee chewing wood off of fallen tree limb

Unfortunately, this species of Carpenter bee was not included in my taxon id card, which only had one Carpenter bee species. Pictures will have to suffice for now. The Honey bee and Stingless bees were the only ones observed pollinating and feeding from flowers. During an off-trail hike, there was a 6 feet tall flowering tree that was surrounded by Honey and Stingless bees.

Although others were super afraid, turning around asking me to check if a bee was on them, I could only zoom in with my body and camera to get the best possible picture of the Honey bee. However, the most involved encounters we had today with bees were with the Sweat bees who liked to land on human body for salt consumption. While entering an off-trail path, could hear students and a professor scream out that they had bees on them.

Sweat bee found near trail

As a bee specialist of the group, I really had no fears. Because I had known that around the region were these small (2-3 inches) ant-hill-looking structures on the ground were evidence of bee burrowing, I knew that they were surrounded by Sweat bees and not killer bees (the Africanized Wester Honey bee being the killer bee of this region). If they were indeed killer bees that landed on my fellow tropical field biologists, it was likely that they would have stung them and I would have heard painful screams – we are not a quiet crowd, as the later boa constrictor incident shows.

These are not very social bees, although they live in small communities that are mostly made up of a single family. Most mounds house fewer than 10 bees, compared to the tens of thousands of bees some beehives contain.

 

Other cool animal encounters had to do with a boa constrictor, a super large (15ft+) leaf-cutter ant hill, and unidentified nymphs that Claire decided to bring back to the station to ask others, including the locals here, and no one could tell us what it was.