Go out to a meadow at dusk and look closely at the flowers — some of them are occupied. Wild bees sleep out in the open, and once you know to look, you'll never stop seeing them. In this episode, Kelly opens up the secret nighttime life of native bees: why the females go home to their burrows while the males sleep outside in the flowers, the astonishing way a sleeping bee holds on (with its jaws), the loyal little crowds of males that bed down on the same stems night after night, and how a cold morning can leave a bumblebee frozen in place, waiting for the sun. Best of all, this is one wonder you can confirm with your own eyes tonight. No lab required. Just a flower and the right hour.
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A wonder-first science podcast about native bees, bumblebees, wild bees, and the lesser-known pollinators most of us walk right past every day.
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[00:00:04] Welcome back to Secret Pollinators. I'm your host, Kelly from Montana, and today we're going to talk about something that almost nobody knows. If you go out to a flower patch at dusk and you look closely at the flowers, you'll see that some of them are occupied. And today we're talking about where wild bees go when the day is done. Not the hive, because we're not talking about honeybees.
[00:00:32] But where do most of our native bees go? Because they don't have a hive. And I mean like, when they stop flying, where do they go for the night? Where do they sleep? The answer is so much stranger and so much more tender than you'd think. So let's find out. The Bee and the Flower
[00:00:56] So let's start with the image that gets people hooked. You're in the garden in the early evening, and you lean in towards a coneflower or stalk of goldenrod or sprigament. And there, right in the center or clinging to the underside of a petal is a bee. Not moving. You wave your hand. Nothing. You lean closer. Still nothing.
[00:01:23] And for a second, your stomach drops because you think it's dead. But it's not dead. It's asleep. And this is one of the most reliable little miracles of a summer evening. Bees, well, they actually sleep. Out in the open, on flowers. And once you've seen it for the first time, you'll never stop seeing it. So who is this little sleeper?
[00:01:51] Well, let's find out because, and this is the part that surprised me the most, it's almost always a he. The males sleep out. Here's the divide that runs through this entire episode. In most of our wild bees, the females and the males live completely different nighttime lives.
[00:02:15] The female has a nest because she dug it and, or she's running a hollow stem or a beetle tunnel in old wood. But it's hers. She built it. And at the end of the day, that's where she goes. She goes back to her burrow and she's home. The males? Well, the males have nothing. A male wild bee doesn't build. He doesn't dig. He has no nest to return to.
[00:02:42] His entire job, which is his entire short adult life, is to find females and mate. So when the sun goes down, he has nowhere to go. So he sleeps outside. He finds a flower or a grassy stem or a twig, and he settles in for the night, totally exposed under the open sky. So think about that for a second. She goes home. He sleeps in a flower.
[00:03:13] The jaw grip. Now, here's the detail that turns this from sweet into completely astonishing. How does a sleeping bee hold on? And you'd think with the legs, you know. I mean, that's what I would think. Or, you know, like you'd grip with your hands. Well, the bee grips with its mouth. Yes, you heard me right.
[00:03:37] A sleeping male bee clamps down on a stem or the edge of a leaf with his mandibles, his jaws. And then he lets go with his legs. He just hangs there. Sometimes his whole body sticks straight out from the stem, held up by nothing but his bite. And he could sleep like that all night. And he could sleep like that all night, jaws locked, body out in the breeze.
[00:04:06] And it gets even better. Some of these males don't sleep alone. In certain species, the males gather, which is like a sleeping aggregation. Dozens of them bed down on a single stand of stems. In some species, hundreds. And they're loyal to it. One backyard study down in Louisiana tracked the same longhorn bee males returning to the same little patch of iris leaves.
[00:04:34] And not just all season, but across different years. So it's the same bed, kind of like a standing reservation kept for life. And there's even a tidy little ritual some of them have before settling in. They'll run their legs down over their bodies. Kind of like a grooming down for the night.
[00:04:59] And the thought is that they may be leaving their scent behind. Like a marker. Like, you know, like a little sign. Invisible sign. This stem is taken. Is it really sleep? So, big question is, do these little native wild bees sleep the way you and I sleep or the way we think about sleep? And the answer is, well, close.
[00:05:29] It's genuinely close to how we sleep. So a resting bee goes still. And its antennae, which are flickering and waving all day long, tasting the world, they droop. They kind of go slack. And its muscle tone drops. And it gets harder to wake. You can get closer to a sleeping bee than you ever could to one awake. Because part of its brain that's on guard, well, it's powered down. And that's not just stillness.
[00:05:58] That's a real rest state. With the same job it has in us. Sorting the day. Settling the memory. Getting ready to do it all again. And there's a second thing layered on top. Especially in bumblebees. And that's cold. A bee is only as warm as the air around it. So when the evening cools, the bee cools with it. And as it cools, it slows down.
[00:06:26] Drop the temperature far enough and a bumblebee slips into torpor. A deep energy saving idol. Where the metabolism throttles down. And the bee essentially can't move until it warms back up. So that bumblebee you found motionless on that goldenrod at dawn. It may not just be sleeping in. It may also be waiting for the sun. Because it physically can't fly. Until its flight muscles warm up.
[00:06:55] So it might sit dewy and still. Holding on to that flower. Until the morning light. Gives it back the day. So here's what I want to leave you with today. Go look. This is one of the few wonders you can confirm with your own eyes. You don't need a microscope. And you don't need a lab. You just need a flower and the right hour.
[00:07:25] Which is late afternoon into dusk. High summers particularly. When you'll see this. If you walk slow. And you look in the centers of flowers. And on the undersides of leaves. You just look for a bee that doesn't react to you. And when you find one. And I'm pretty sure you will. Notice how it's holding on. Check the tiny jaws. See if it's alone.
[00:07:53] Or if there's a little crowd of them bedded down on the same stem. And then just leave it be. Please. Just let it sleep. That's it. Isn't that interesting? So tonight. Go look. Check the flowers at dusk. And tomorrow morning. Watch one wake up. Thank you so much for listening. And until next time. Watch the bees. Because they're probably watching you back. Back.