In my last column, I confidently predicted both the species and the approximate timing of my first bee sighting of the season: I expected it would be a honey bee, turning up sometime in mid- or late March.
This seemed like an ironclad bet, based on experience. Since I got serious about studying bees about six years ago, the season has always begun with a honey bee, and thinking back even farther, I can’t recall noticing any bees other than this species before the final days of March. The ability of honey bees to preheat themselves in the hive, huddling with their colleagues to generate and conserve body heat, gives this species an unusual ability for activity in cold weather. And the very broad range of flowers honey bees will visit likewise gives them an edge at the early end of the season, when just a few plants, such as crocuses, snowdrops, and periwinkle are in bloom, which may be of little interest to more specialized native bees.
But shortly after sending in that column, I started to wonder. Sure, the earliest native bee I’ve ever found turned up on March 30. But then, how much have I really looked prior to that date? Existing records for native bees generally start in April, but then, fieldwork for the studies that produced those records generally didn’t start until well into April, either. Likewise, my assumption that native bee emergence wouldn’t antedate widespread availability of native flowers suddenly seemed a bit suspect. What if flower availability matters less to bees than humans think it will?
So amid the sun and mild air of a very pleasant March 16, I set out to test my revised thinking. I visited a section of the power line right-of-way that crosses West Chop, focusing on an area that produced some early April bees last spring. The site was promising: Relatively advanced plant development for the date suggested a warm microclimate, and the topography of the land resulted in intense sunlight on a south-facing slope.
It did not take long to torpedo my honey bee prediction! Just a few steps into my survey, I disturbed a basking bee, which circled a few times, landed again, and positioned itself to soak up the sun. I moved in for a closer look and a few photographs, recognizing the bee as a male of the species I’d expect to kick off the native bee season with Colletes inaequalis.
Additional searching turned up many more similar individuals — about 20 in all. All were males, alternately patrolling (presumably for a female to mate with) and resting in full sun. The number as well as the date surprised me: the species is not common on the Vineyard, and previous records, with just a few narrow misses, fit neatly into the month of April.
The stag party, though, was no surprise. In many bee species, including this one, adult males emerge well in advance of the first females. As an evolutionary strategy, this makes sense: By the time females are available for mating with, many less well-adapted males will have died, leaving a select group of demonstrably successful males for the females to choose from.
A return visit three days later turned up even more male Colletes, but also the first female of the season, sheltering in the entrance of her nest burrow, and not at all interested in coming out. Indeed, there may have been no reason for her to emerge. Nothing in bloom was evident in the area of her nest, and the woody species this bee most often collects pollen from — willows and red maple — were unlikely near the dry, sandy nest site. But, by golly, this female bee would be ready to roll when resources did appear!
A still greater surprise was a female of a second native species, Lasioglossum cinctipes. For an uncommon and rather local bee on the Vineyard, with about 30 previous records concentrated at a couple of up-Island sites, this individual, a female with a completed nest, was extremely early. Previous records for this small “sweat bee” cluster in late April and early May.
The discovery of these exceptionally early bees makes me think of our grackles and red-winged blackbirds, migratory birds that largely vacate the Island for the winter but form the vanguard of northbound migration. A blackbird heading north in early February cannot expect to find suitable conditions for mating and nesting at our latitude. But while risky, getting such an early start offers benefits as well, in that when conditions do improve, the early arrivals will be ready and waiting on established territories.
The whole episode illustrates the importance of skepticism about even your own observations: Assumptions you’ve made can simply be wrong. And it also showcases the role of variability in wild species: As the climate continues to warm and winters grow ever shorter, what now seem like marginal, recklessly early individuals will look progressively wiser and more important to the adaptability of their species.
