Meet Colletes perileucus, a southwestern US native found nowhere else in the world.
EXPOSITION
In 2021, a native bee nest was discovered outside of the Marley Building on the University of Arizona Main Campus in Tucson.
(image = nest outside marley)
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Some curious students collected bees, excavated a couple of nests, and took them to the University of Arizona Insect Collection to determine what species they belong to!
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Identification process (Charles/Tanner)
Morphological features
The bees were identified as Colletes perileucus, a native cellophane bee in the family Colletidae.
Why are they called “cellophane” bees?
Bees in the family Colletidae are called cellophane bees, plasterer bees, and polyester bees. These common names refer to the natural plastic produced by female bees to line the insides of their nests!
high res images
More in-depth stuff about Dufour’s glands? ?????
The Life Cycle of Colletes perileucus
The season for C. perileucus begins in late spring, around the time mesquite begins to bloom.
The adult cellophane bees will emerge from the ground in the early spring, when their preferred food source, mesquite, blooms.
Like many bees, cellophane bees make nests and lay their eggs underground! Most of a bee’s life takes place in the subterranean nest dug by its mother, where it hatches from its egg and develops from a little larva into an adult bee.
Male bees tend to emerge before females, and wait outside of the nest to mate with a female as soon as she emerges. (insert SUMMER high res below)
Often, there are so many males interested in a single female that “mating balls” are formed, with many males surrounding a female in the center of the “ball.” (insert mating ball image below)
Once she has mated, a female bee will begin to prepare her own underground nest to lay her eggs in.
As a solitary bee, Colletes perileucus females are truly single mothers. Each individual female will dig her own nest, with a single “brood cell” for each egg. Each cell will receive its own food provision that will last her offspring until they reach adulthood. Once the cells are provisioned and her eggs are laid, she will seal the nest, and her job is complete.
Her fist task is to dig a tunnel into the ground and excavate a series of brood cells, one after another.
She will then line the brood cells with a natural polyester. The female bee mixes her saliva with a secretion from a special gland in her abdomen, then “paints” the walls of her nest with this bioplastic using her brush-like mouthparts.
Now that her nest is built, she needs to collect food for her babies.
She will collect nectar and pollen from nearby mesquite trees in bloom!
© Sue Carnahan from an iNaturalist observation.
Each brood cell will receive its own provision from the mother bee. Unlike other bees, cellophane bees provide their young with liquid provisions, basically a nectar-pollen smoothie!
The larvae has a little air sac in its body that allows it to float in the liquid.
This nutritious soup will feed the larva until it is ready to pupate into an adult bee!
insert FALL high res
At this time of year, many other insect mothers are also looking for places to lay their eggs.
These nests do not go unnoticed by parasites…but they are fun and cute too