Dawson's Burrowing Bee More Life
Photos: Pictures from the "Insects" episode.
HowStuffWorks: How can you train honeybees to sniff for bombs? If asked to name types of bees, many people might stop after "honey" and "bumble." They'd be off by nearly 20,000, the estimated number of bee species buzzing around Earth. Dawson's burrowing bee, also referred to as Dawson's bee, is a large, round, fast-flier endemic to Western Australia. Among fellow insects, this bee surely has a most peculiar life and death.
First, an introduction to these strange creatures, whose scientific name is Amegilla dawsoni. As solitary bees, they don't have hives or the worker-bee culture common to honeybees, but they do nest in groups of up to 10,000 in the arid outback of Western Australia. Females create nests in dry clay beds and also burrow underground tunnels where their young eventually will hatch. From a bird's-eye view, a nest of Dawson's bees appears as hundreds or thousands of small brown dirt mounds, with an almost perfectly round turret in the middle of each mound serving as the entrance.
DEATH AND COURTSHIP
After Dawson's bees emerge from hibernation, mating begins immediately. Males appear first, besieging the newly hatched females, even before they've fully surfaced from their underground tunnels. The eager males become tremendously frenzied, spurred on by the scent of the females. They're so incensed that they'll kill other male Dawson's bees.
The area around where the female is getting ready to make her entrance becomes a gladiator arena of buzzing, attacking, ecstatic bees. In some cases, the male bees converge upon one another, forming huge masses that bite and sting their fellows to death. Although many male animals, of various species, fight for the right to mate, few actually kill each other. Male Dawson's bees are among the bloody exception.
Given the preponderance of frenzied male bees, as many as 90 percent of female bees will mate as soon they emerge. Sometimes, a female will become caught in the center of a mass of warring bees, and she too will become a victim, being torn apart. But not all Dawson's bees approach mating in the same way. So-called "minor" males stay away from the fight. These smaller male bees look for mates in flowers or wait near the edge of females' nests, rather than directly in front of females' burrows.
After the mating is done, with more powerful bees having mated several times, all remaining male bees die, and the ground is littered with their carcasses. Until the next mating season, the nesting area will be calm and populated only by females and their developing young, hibernating safely underground.
Written by Jacob Silverman, HowStuffWorks
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