Bee and Pollination Links:

Bee and Pollination Links:

Bees in General:

http://pick4.pick.uga.edu/mp/20q Photo keys to eastern US species! Also photo guides to many animals and plants
USDA native bee lab, Logan Utah. Focus on Megachile, Osmia, and conservation of native bees.
USDA Carl Hayden Bee Lab, Tucson Arizona. Focus on Apis, and on education. Good information on native bees from Steve Buchmann.
USDA Bee Research Lab. Beltsville MD. Focus on Apis
The International Bee Research Association. Mostly apis and commercial interests, but some good links here., including a directory of people interested in the field
The Insect world’s Solitary Bee page. Nice background and information, good scans of excellent paintings. This page is part of an excellent general entomology site.
International Pollination services (Pollination.com). Lots of information and images about Megachile, Osmia, and Nomia as pollinators, and some on Bombus as well. Good links.
Raising orchard mason bees. North Carolina Agricultural Extension Service.
Common Missouri Wasps and Bees. Good general info and images on selected members of this group. Missouri Department of Conservation
The pollination page. - Pollinator.com. Primarily horticultural interests, but good information on native bees
Pollination studies at the University of Idaho. Dr. Karen Strickler’s page. Lots of good information and links on alfalfa pollinators
Carpenter bees of Florida. Biology, images, including both Xylocopa and Ceratina.
Nelson Bohart bug gallery. Excellent online images, with emphasis on hymenoptera (site is dedicated to the prominent Hymenopteran systematist Ned Bohart)
The Bee Works. Lots of stuff for kids, listing of many (all?) genera of bees, information on pollination
The Bee Course. is a workshop offered for conservation biologists, pollination ecologists and other biologists who want to gain greater knowledge of the systematics and biology of bees. Includes application form for the course (held at the Southwestern Research Station, Portal, Arizona). I want to go!
Bee Phylogeny page from Danforth et al, Cornell
The Syrphus pages: Natural history and environment of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. http://syrphus.mysite.freeserve.com http://hbrg.mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk
Pamphlets on many types of bees from the International Bee Research Association. http://www.ibra.org.uk/categories/20090402
Amazing slide shows from Sam Droge on Bee genera fo Eastern North America http://www.slideshare.net/sdroege

Bumble bees (Bombus):

Live streaming video from inside a bumble bee nest! Narration and text is in Czech 9by Miroslav Pavelka). Way too cool!
List of World Bumble Bees . "List of the world's bumble bee species, with notes on taxonomic and nomenclatural problems. Species can be accessed by biogeographic region, by subgenus, or from an alphabetic index to some of the more commonly used names. Also includes pages on subjects such as the decline in British bumble bees." By the British Bombus Systematist Paul Williams.
Flight of the bumble bee. Reprint online of Michigan entomologist article, with very useful cartoons of color patterns for the species of the area. Not to be confused with the piano classic Flight of the bumble bee. by Rimsky Korsakov
The Wisconsin Bumblebee. Online key to Wisconsin species (but note that it uses some older terminology, referring to nevadensis as auricomis, and pennsylvanicus as americanorum)
Bumble bees of Canada. Lots on colony rearing. Also info on genetic, species lists, other information. By Robert Owen and Troy Whidden
Bumble bees of Florida. Key and images, biology. Part of the wonderful "featured creatures" site.
Key to and background on Western US Bombus. Excellent undergraduate project at evergreen college, with good images.
The Bumble Bee pages. British site with a wide range of good information, including how to mark and rear Bombus.
Bumble bee nest box construction. Also has a linked page with a nice list of print and electronic references.
Bumble Boosters is a cooperative project of the University of Nebraska Department of Entomology, the Lincoln Public Schools Science Focus Program, and the Folsom Children's Zoo. Wonderful online key and photos of pinned specimens of Nebraska Bombus and Psythirus. NOTE: The key and drawings and much of the information on the web can be bought in a cute little booklet (spiral-bound 3x5 cards with high quality printing) that might be useful. It's only $5. I ordered a copy from: University of Nebraska Cooperative extension. PO box 830918 Lincoln NE 68583-0918
Call them to order at: 402-472-3023, and ask about the "bumbleboosters" book, item # ENT-EC1564.

Canadian Biodiversity Information Facility. Parts of the at the Canadian National Collection (including over 8,000 bumble bee specimens) have been databased, digitized and georeferenced, with unique identifier labels added to each specimens. It is now available online at http://www.cbif.gc.ca/portal/digir-toc.php
2.5 minute BBC video of a Bombus lucorum - truly amazing. Click HERE, then click on the video that says "Bombus lucorum nest chambers".

Commercial Bombus sites

Kendall bioresearch services. Background and a few images on European Bombus
Koppert. Commercial supplier of Bombus colonies for glasshouse pollination
The mason bee people. Commercial supplier and information clearing house for mason bee materials.. http://www.beediverse.com/

Conservation:

The Xerces Society. International nonprofit organization, focused on public education about invertebrates and conservation projects that demonstrate their critical roles in endangered ecosystems around the globe
The Forgotten Pollinators campaign is an effort to call international attention to the critical role pollination plays in putting food on our plates, and in maintaining healthy wild communities around the globe. Parallels the book of the same name
The Vanishing Pollinators – Great photos and some background info from the Smithsonian institution (US). Oddly, many of the Bombus photos are of European species.
A Special Feature on Insect Pollinator Declines in North America forms in the online journal "Conservation Ecology" (http://www.consecol.org/Journal/vol5/iss1/).
A very interesting project by Quinn McFrederick (graduate student at SFSU) involving the public in a survey to confirm the disappearance of bumble bees from San Francisco. http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~sfbee/. Includes keys and photos of the local bees . See also Newspaper artcicle at. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/07/28/MN92594.DTL

Pollination:

Pollination Tool Kit -- Assessment of value to society of pollinators. By Ecological Society of America and Union of Concerned Scientists
The pollination page. Primarily horticultural interests, but good information on native bees
On line pollination lecture, Part of a Virginia Tech distance learning course on insects and society. Some good visuals and information
The birds and the bees. Excellent images are featured in this danish museum exhibit, including quite a few bees.
Plant-Animal Interaction Course from Vanderbilt University. Make sure to visit the Pollination Review and Quiz for an excellent set of images and information about the match between plants and their pollinators by Olle Pellmyr.
Pollen tubes. Nice images, microscopy tips, and information about pollen tubes. Good links to british microscopy journal that has excellent micrographs.
Australasian Pollination Ecologists Society (A.P.E.S.)
Brain pop has a nice animation/movie about the basics of pollination (aimed at kids but fun for everyone) -- http://www.brainpop.com/science/plantsandanimals/pollination/
Celebrating Wildflowers Pollinator pages on the U.S. Forest Service website: http://www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers/pollinators/index.shtml. This is a collaboration between the Forest Service and the North American Pollinator Protection Campaign and has a wide variety of resources and information about pollinators (courtesy David Inouye).

Apis

A.I. Root beekeeping supplies (in Medina, only a few miles from Akron)
The Value of Honey Bees As Pollinators of U.S. Crops in 2000. Research article (online) from the journal “Bee Culture”
CyberBeeNet. Good starting place for Apis.
See the world through the eyes of a honey bee. Nice set of visualizations for bee (and insect) vision.
The Honeybee Waggle Dance: An active participation, role playing game!

Other

The Hummingbird Society. Hummingbirds are important pollinators -- learn and see more of them here.
Pollination in Vernal pools. By Dr. Robbin Thorp, UCD (one of my mentors as an undergraduate). http://vernalpools.org/Thorp/ Has lots of great bee photos and info on bee biology
Blue Orchard Mason Bee Forum. "A gathering place for mason bee enthusiasts."
Instructions for "A Standardized method for monitoring Bee populations - The Bee Inventory (BI) Plot." http://online.sfsu.edu/~beeplot/pdfs/Bee%20Plot%202003.pdf. Pan traps, standardized net census, etc.

Books:

Alford, D.V. 1975. Bumblebees. London : Davis-Poynter,

Exhaustive and exciting summary of the basic biology of this fascinating group, with a heavy emphasis on British species.

Heinrich, B. 1979. Bumblebee economics. Harvard University Press.

Engaging and challenging exploration of the physiological ecology of Bombus.

Michener, CD. Bees of the World. .to be released Summer 2000.

Magnum opus by the top bee systematist of them all.

Michener, CD, RJ McGinley, BN Danforth. 1994. The Bee Genera of North and Central America. Smithsonian Institution Press. Washington, USA.

If you're between Panama and the Arctic circle, have I got a bee book for you! This is a great place to start in identification -- great pictures in the key to help you out, good descriptions of genera, and some scant but useful information on biology. Note that the key has side-by-side English and Spanish couplets!

Mitchell, Theodore B. 1960. Bees of the Eastern United States. Published by the North Carolina Agricultural Experiment Station. 2 volumes.

Perhaps 18 pages of introductory biological background, then > 500 pages of keys, line drawings. species descriptions, and distribution notes. Good for technical ID, but not a book for reading. No, the author is no relation to me that I know of!

Christopher O'Toole & Anthony Raw. 1999. The Bees of the World. Facts on File. London : Blandford ; New York, N.Y. : Distributed in the U.S. by Sterling.

Wonderful source on basic bee biology of all groups, great photos.

Stephens, WP. GE Bohart, PF Torchio. The Biology and External Morphology of Bees. With a synopsis of the genera of Northwestern America. Published by the Agricultural Experiment Station, Oregon State University, Corvallis OR.

This book is packed with great information. The key to genera is nice, but there is an enormous wealth of information here on the basic biology of a wide variety of bees (emphasis on Nomia and other agriculturally important wild bees). The binding on this book is terrible -- every copy I've ever seen has all the pages loose, but it's worth the trouble.

Keys (I find Laverty and Harder, and Medler and Carney to be the most useful, though discover life is handy and clever).

Chandler, L. 1950. The Bombidae of Indiana. Proceedings of the Indiana Academy of Science 60:167-177.

Frison, TH. 1919. Keys to the separation of the Bremidae, or bumblebees of Illinois, and other notes. Transactions of the Illinois State Academy of Science 12:157-166.

Husband, RW, RL Fischer, TW Porter. 1980. Description and Biology of bumblebees (Hymenoptera: Apidae) in Michigan. Great Lakes Entomologist 13:225-239.

Laverty, TM and LD Harder. 1988. The bumble bees of eastern Canada. Canadian Entomologist 120:965-987.

Medler, JT, and DW Carney. 1963. Bumblebees of Wisconsin (Hymenoptera: Apidae). University of Wisconsin Research Bulletin 240:1-47.

Milliron, HE. 1939. The taxonomy and distribution of Michigan Bombidae, with keys. Papers Michigan Academy of Science, Arts and Letters 24:167-182.

Pickering, J. Discover life - Maps of bee (and other taxa) specimens and valid bee names available online, with online keys and distribution maps. www.discoverlife.org. .

My material (RJM):

Quicktime movies of pollinators foraging on Lupine at Cascade Metropark (a small and disjunct population in Summit County OH) in 1997:

Bombus griseocollis - Foraging sequence - 1.2 meg

Bombus griseocollis - closeup - note how the flower is manipulated - 3.4 meg

Osmia sp. 2.2 meg. Notice her use of the middle set of legs to manipulate the flower and pump out pollen

Last updated: 05/03/2009

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