The Wonder of California Native Bees Spring Quarterly Gathering

Kelli Cox and Carol Ellis, justifiably known as the “Native Bee Ladies,” captivated an audience of more than 40 people at the Quarterly Gathering of the AGVWC on March 21, 2026, at the Community Room at Burbank Heights.  The Native Bee Ladies are long-time members of the Sonoma County Beekeepers Association, an organization that focuses primarily on the western honey bee, Apis mellifera.  But what really gets Kelli’s and Carol’s wings vibrating is California native bees.

There are over 3600  kinds of native bees in the United States, and half of them can be found in California.  The Ladies said that in a typical “wild” garden in Sonoma County you should be able to see about 40 different native bees.  In a manicured garden…..not so many.   

The amazing factoids just kept coming and coming.  

Tomato plants are pollinated by bumble bees, who use buzz pollination to shake the pollen off of the flower. There are usually between 50 and 200 bumblebees in a single nest.  (Western honey bees will have thousands in a single hive.)

Goldenrod is one of the best host plants for  native bees. 

Mason bees can pollinate about 95% of the plants they visit, while honey bees can pollinate only about 5% of the plants they visit.

Leaf cutter bees cut out circles and ovals from the leaves they visit, each shape having a different function in building their nest tunnels  And if you want to see the cutting in action, you better be sharp, because it takes only about 5 or 10 seconds for them to complete the cut and fly off with the small piece of the leaf.
 
Squash bees mate inside squash blossoms.  The females return to their nests after mating, but the males stay in the blossoms and sleep there overnight. 
 
Six mason bees can pollinate an entire fruit tree, but the same job would take a few hundred honey bees.

We’ve had the Native Bee Ladies present before, and we hope we’ll have them again!
Bob Burke

Additional Resources:
https://sonomabees.org/
Xerces Society
Flashcards of Native Bees of the Western US 
Theadore Payne 
CalFlora Nursery
Willowside School Nursery
Carol highly recommended the documentary PBS Film:  My Garden of 1000 bees “Taking refuge from the coronavirus pandemic, wildlife filmmaker Martin Dohrn set out to record all the bees he could find in his tiny urban garden in Bristol, England, filming them with one-of-a-kind lenses he forged on his kitchen table. See his surprising discoveries in My Garden of a Thousand Bees”