🐝Solitary bees: Unsung heroines outside the hive

Everything you thought you knew about bees is wrong. They don’t make honey, or live in hives, or serve their queen. They couldn’t care less about the greater good. And they’re a lousy metaphor for collaboration, strength in numbers, or any of the other misapplications of their apine ways. Well, that’s not strictly true. Honey bees are all those things, of course. But honey bees are only one species—a large majority of bees bear no resemblance to their community-focused fuzzy cousins. Instead, they live their lives flying solo, unfettered by the constraints of communal living. They’re solitary bees—and not only in name. If not for their tragically brief lifespan, it would be tempting to nominate the solitary bee as the feminist icon of the insect world. But there’s much to learn from them regardless—including from new research about the role genetics plays in social behavior. 🐦 [Tweet this!]( 🌐 [View this email on the web]( Sponsored by [Quartz Obsession] Solitary bees November 05, 2018 All the single ladies --------------------------------------------------------------- Everything you thought you knew about bees is wrong. They don’t make honey, or live in hives, or serve their queen. They couldn’t care less about the greater good. And they’re a lousy metaphor for collaboration, strength in numbers, or any of the other misapplications of their apine ways. Well, that’s not strictly true. Honey bees are all those things, of course. But honey bees are only one species—a large majority of bees bear no resemblance to their community-focused fuzzy cousins. Instead, they live their lives flying solo, unfettered by the constraints of communal living. They’re solitary bees—and not only in name. If not for their tragically brief lifespan, it would be tempting to nominate the solitary bee as the feminist icon of the insect world. But there’s much to learn from them regardless—including from new research about the role genetics plays in social behavior. 🐦 [Tweet this!]( 🌐 [View this email on the web]( By the digits [90%:]( Bee species that are solitary [<0.08 inches:]( Length of the smallest solitary bees, Perdita minima [9%:]( Approximate solitary bee lifetime spent as an active adult, as opposed to an egg, larva, or pupa [$17.37:]( Cost of Amazon’s most popular bee hotel [50%:]( Midwestern native bee species that have disappeared from their historic ranges since 1900. [$7.6 billion:]( Value of the California almond industry. (It’d be nothing without bees.) [20,000+]( Bee species that do not make honey [1]( Bee species that make honey Giphy Out there, on their own --------------------------------------------------------------- Rather than living in hives, solitary bees spend their lives in individual nests: domed constructions made out of mud, plant resins, and tree sap, which might be located in holes in trees, empty snail shells, or the crannies of buildings. Hole-dwelling bees make a little mud “door” over the entrance, to indicate that someone is living there. Others, known as “mining bees,” nest in underground burrows. Every female is a queen—and once she’s made herself at home, she’ll lay between 20 and 30 eggs. (Like the honey bee queen, she too can choose the sex of them.) She fends entirely for herself, doing what she can to protect her offspring. That said, solitary bees just aren’t really into family living. The female bee will provide her larva with the essentials, but she doesn’t actually tend to the growing young. In fact, their adult lifespan is so short—just four to six weeks—that these bees will never actually meet their offspring when they emerge from the pupal state 11 months later. Sponsored by Citrix Do you have what it takes to fight off hackers? --------------------------------------------------------------- In Security Champion!, a game that challenges your patience, focus, and perseverance, you are a Chief Security Officer tasked with saving your company from a band of malicious hackers.[Play the game to see if you can stop a cyber attack.]( Fun fact! They might not make honey, but solitary bees are fabulous pollinators. A single red mason bee provides as much pollination as [120 worker honeybees](. Single room, please Hotel, motel, Holiday Inn --------------------------------------------------------------- In cities such as Amsterdam, [so-called “bee hotels”]( have been erected to tackle dwindling numbers of these insects. Solitary bees can now “check themselves in” to these inauspicious looking piles of logs and twigs, where they’re guaranteed a home all to themselves in a city in which accommodations can be hard to come by. A similar project is [afoot in Vancouver, Canada]( where bees are catered to by their very own “bee butler,” as well as 20 other hotel employees. (How much they appreciate the summertime daily human tours through their neighborhood isn’t clear.) All this effort isn’t for nothing, however. Solitary bees play a crucial, and much understated, role in the ecosystem. They may not be as glamorous as honeybees, but they’re critical in pollinating plants and helping them to flower and fruit. “They’re the start of the food chain,” ecologist Geert Timmermans [told NBC](. “When it goes well with the insects, it also goes well with the birds and mammals.” Giphy Pop quiz Which of these is not a kind of solitary bee? Carpenter beeLeafcutter beeWool carder beePlumber bee Correct. There's no such thing as a plumber bee. Incorrect. If your inbox doesn’t support this quiz, find the solution at bottom of email. 🤖 THE BUZZ FROM QUARTZ This week we’re kicking off the Quartz Gaming Club, an interactive chat adventure into the wide world of gaming, with stops along the way to discuss how and why games drive important shifts in business, technology, and culture. We’re playing six different games together over six weeks, novices and experts alike, with QZ writers and readers discussing as we go. [Come play with us.]( Quotable “The lovely flowers embarrass me, / They make me regret I am not a bee” —Solitary poet Emily Dickinson, in [an 1864 letter to a friend]( “The male solitary bee…spends most of his time defending his territory, looking for females, or sipping nectar among the flowers. But to his credit, he is a charming little creature” —[Self-taught botanist and entomologist Mary Paetzel]( Because science Why are some bees social, and others solitary? --------------------------------------------------------------- Sweat bees are iridescent green insects with a profound attraction to the smell of human perspiration. But they’re also a great way for scientists to study the connection between genetics and social activity. Though all sweat bees nest in the ground, some are solitary, while others live in a hierarchical structure, like honey bees. [In a recent study]( scientists at Princeton sequenced the genome of hundreds of different bees—some social, some solitary—then analyzed the data to understand patterns of gene activity and social behavior. The study found about 200 gene variations that were linked to social behavior, several of which were clustered near six genes implicated in human autism. (A separate study on honey bees from last year found a very similar link between bee genes and autism genes.) The findings are preliminary, but suggest that variations in particular genes do play a role in the social behavior of bees. “It came as a surprise that we came across the same results independently,” [ecologist Sarah Kocher]( told Princeton’s news site. “It suggests the existence of a core set of genes that play an important role in shaping social behavior across different species.” Watch this! The wondrous life of the mason bee --------------------------------------------------------------- This deep-dive into the habits of the mason bee, and how it differs from the honey bee, walks you through every stage of the insect’s life. You’re almost certain to fall in love with them—though you may choose to avert your eyes for some fairly steamy “birds and bees” scenes around 1:10. take me down this 🐰 hole! What is it like to be a bee? --------------------------------------------------------------- It probably feels like something to be like a bee—but what exactly that is is still pretty fuzzy. We’ve observed bees doing all kinds of different, interesting things, from [having a concept of zero]( to [experiencing emotion]( from tool use to [social learning](. But whether that means the lights are on and someone is home isn’t clear. Recent [breakthroughs in bee neurology]( however, are beginning to paint a picture of bees’ consciousness, and how their grain-sized brains might in fact give them a sense of existing in the world. Reuters/David W Cerny Poll Most relatable thing about solitary bees? [Click here to vote]( They’re their own boss and they answer to no oneThey just want to be left alone, pleaseThey do amazing work and get none of the credit In Friday’s poll about [origami]( 44% of you said you haven’t tried it since you made paper cranes in school; just 24% of you do it. 📧 In Friday’s email, we mistakenly reversed the etymology of “origami,” which comes from “ori” (to fold) and “kami” (paper). 🍯 [Dive into the archive]( ✏️ [What did you think of today’s email?](mailto:obsession%2Bfeedback@qz.com?cc=&subject=Thoughts%20about%20solitary%20bees&body=) 💡 [What should we obsess over next?](mailto:obsession%2Bideas@qz.com?cc=&subject=Obsess%20over%20this%20next.&body=) 🐰 [Discuss on the Quartz Obsession Reddit]( 📬 [Forward this email to a friend](mailto:replace_with_friends_email@qz.com?cc=obsession%2Bforward@qz.com&subject=%F0%9F%90%9DSolitary%20bees%3A%20Unsung%20heroines%20outside%20the%20hive&body=Thought%20you%27d%20enjoy.%20%0ARead%20it%20here%20%E2%80%93%20http%3A%2F%2Fqz.com%2Femail%2Fquartz-obsession%2F1450625) 🎁 [Get the Quartz Tabsession Chrome Extension]( Today’s email was written by [Natasha Frost]( edited by [Jessanne Collins]( and produced by [Luiz Romero](. 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