Spring signals female bees to lay the next generation of pollinators

The first days of spring – brighter and warmer – are a biological trigger for female bees to wake up from hibernation and begin to build future colonies.

These enormous bees, sometimes two to three times larger than a worker bee, are vital to our ecosystem and carry all the genetic material necessary for an entire generation of bees inside their bodies.

If you are lucky, you might see these big bees bumble through spring blossoms in search of food and a new home. Be careful not to disturb them. Killing a few bees during the summer may not have much impact. But the death of a single female bee, ready to reproduce in early spring, could wipe out an entire colony and erase the important services that her offspring would provide – pollinating flowers in gardens, parks, farms and meadows.

My research explores the foraging behavior of bees. I spend a lot of time in public parks and gardens in Seattle observing bees collecting pollen. I analyze which plants bees have vi