Want to ‘save the bees’ in Kansas? Here’s why keeping honeybees might not help
There are roughly 400 species of bees that can be found in Kansas, and in the coming weeks, you’ll start to see them emerge for the spring and summer seasons.
That’s according to Brian Spiesman, pollinator expert and assistant professor with Kansas State University’s entomology department, who said you’ll most likely see bumblebees and honeybees first.
“Honeybees are always one of the first to come out just because they’re able to, you know, maintain those colonies over the winter, whereas the other ones kind of have to emerge from hibernation,” Spiesman said.
Queen bees will also become visible soon.
“In the next couple of weeks, we should start seeing the queens buzzing around,” Spiesman said. “They’re out searching for nests so they can establish their nests and grow their nests for the summer.”
Later in the spring, you’ll see other types of bees common in the state, including sweat bees, mason bees, carpenter bees, squash bees and more. The insects will stay until September or October, depending on the weather.
While there is a “fear factor” around bees, they are actually docile insects, Spiesman said.
“If you kind of leave them alone, they’re not going to, you know, swarm or attack,” he noted.
What to know about ‘save the bees’
There’s been a lot of talk about the “save the bees” movement, Spiesman said, and declines in populations are also being noticed in Kansas.
“In Kansas, it’s kind of like everywhere else in the world basically,“ the pollinator expert said. “We’re seeing low-level declines across a lot of different species.”
For Kansas specifically, Spiesman said the American bumblebee species needs to be protected and could be considered endangered by the federal government soon.
“A lot of factors contribute to that,” Spiesman said. “It’s a wide-ranging species that lives sort of across the eastern U.S. and down in the southwestern U.S., down into Mexico, and we’re seeing kind of broad declines in that species kind of everywhere.”
Honeybees, however, are not in danger. Because honeybees are not a native species, scientists are able to have more management over them.
“As a species, they’re doing just fine,” Spiesman said.
What you can do to help conserve bees in Kansas
There are multiple things people can do to help keep bees in the state, Spiesman said.
First, plant flowers in your garden, leaving areas open for bees to nest. It’s also important to mow your grass sparingly.
“In the spring time, the queen bumblebees are out searching for nesting areas, and so if they have places . . . where people don’t clear out as much brush, like gardens from the previous year, or rake their leaves as much . . . that’s great nesting habitats for bees,” Spiesman said.
He said if you want to help bee conservation, it’s important to remember which bees are endangered and which species aren’t.
“If people do want to keep bees, then that’s great and I encourage that, but if they’re keeping bees to save the bees, that’s another thing because honeybees are actually strong competitors for resources . . . with the native species. So the more honeybees you have in an area, the less resources are going to be available for the native bees that actually need those resources for survival,” Spiesman said.
Here are some bees native to Kansas, and you can see the full list on the iNaturalist website:
Modest masked bee
Eastern masked bee
Spine-shouldered cellophane bee
American cellophane bee
Oblique longhorn
Broad-banded longhorn
Nimble squash bee
Wooly oil-digger
Blueberry digger bee
Spiesman is developing an app called BeeMachine.AI which would use artificial intelligence to identify the species when you upload a photo of a bee. You can also visit the app’s website to use it online.
There’s also a website called iNaturalist, where people can go in to upload photos of any kind of wildlife, and there are experts on hand to help identify a species or a plant type.
