The Emergence

Joe Dlugo
2 days ago
6 min read

Native Bee Bulletin of the Washington Native Bee Society

Summer 2026

It's mid-summer, and there's plentiful sunshine and warm, dry air. With less wildflowers in the lowlands, attention turns to the spectacular alpine meadows, or the gumweed blooms along saltwater beaches and desert roadsides. Wherever you are, if there are flowers blooming, look for bumble bees, leafcutters, and long-horneds in big numbers.

A halictus furrow bee in dramatic flight with wings spread, over yellow flowers. — Halictus rubicundus in flight. Image by Tony Dickey

Events & Volunteer Opportunities

July 30-Aug 2 Thurston County Fair - Volunteers needed - Email David Jennings (pnwnativebees@gmail.com)

July

Aug 8-9 City of Dupont, Annual Moonwalk

Aug 8-10 West Seattle Nursery Festival

Aug 8-14/19 Clallam County Fair, Volunteers needed - Email Ingrid Carmean (icarmean2@gmail.com)

Aug 17 WaNBS/WNPS Central Puget Sound Chapter Magnuson Park

Featured Plants

by Kyle Roslund

Common Madia (Madia elegans)

Fireweed (Chamaenerion angustifolium)

Tarweed (Madia elegans) Despite its sticky leaves and distinctive scent, tarweed is a pollinator favorite! Blooming from mid to late summer, its bright yellow flowers provide an important source of nectar and pollen for native bees, butterflies, and other beneficial insects when many other wildflowers have finished blooming. These flowers close up during the heat of the day to save moisture which extends bloom length. According to Bee Atlas sampling, this flower is popular with long horn bees (Melissodes) and green sweat bees (Agapostemon).

Fireweed (Chamaenerion angustifolium)One of Washington's most recognizable summer wildflowers, fireweed's vibrant pink flower spikes brighten roadsides, meadows, and recently disturbed areas. It's an excellent nectar source for native bees, hummingbirds, and butterflies, and often flourishes after wildfires, helping restore ecosystems. According to Bee Atlas sampling, this flower is popular with bumble bees (Bombus) and leaf cutter bees (Megachile).

Keep an eye out—both of these beautiful native plants are likely blooming in your area right now!

Kyle Roslund is a WaNBS board member. He is very active with bee conservation efforts in the Clark County area, spearheading the process to become a Bee City USA and organizing the Vancouver Pollinator Festival.

Cuckoo Bees: Nature's Nest Robbers

by Lisa Robinson

No nest. No pollen. No parenting. Meet the bees that steal it all.

A red nomad bee, a bee that is almost all reddish-orange with a few yellow spots on its abdomen. — This nomad bee has no name because so many Nomada species in the west have yet to be studied or organized taxonomically. They belong to the Apidae family but parasitize mainly Andrena mining bees in the Andrenidae family, which is an exception to Emery’s Rule that cleptoparasites generally stick to home and target closely related species.

Imagine hiking up a path and seeing a wasp-like insect flying near your feet, close to the ground, searching the area, entering some holes, or nosing under the edge of a rock. You’ve most likely spotted a cuckoo bee that is looking for a home to rob. Cuckoo bees are cleptoparasites. Cleptoparasitism literally translates to 'parasitism by theft.' Parasitism is actually far more common than predation.

Often cuckoo bees will have short faces, thicker antennae, and a buffalo-like hump to the thorax. Telling a bee from a wasp is easier with a camera to enlarge some details, but once you get a feel for their overall gestalt, you'll learn to recognize them at a glance. Under a microscope, you'd see feathery, dull plumose hairs clustered around a small knob in front of the wing joint — the pronotal lobe. Another thing to note is that a wasp’s pronotal lobes touch their tegula, which is a cap like an epaulette that covers the wing joint. In bees, there's a small gap between the two.

Bees like the Nomada species above are mostly looking for Andrena mining bees for hosts. They are unusual in that Nomada belong to Apidae, the family of bumble bees, digger bees, honey bees, and so forth. Mining bees are in an entirely different family, Andrenidae. One thing in the nomad bee’s favor is that there are a lot of mining bees around for them to parasitize. Cleptoparasites favor common species for hosts as they can count on large numbers to make them easier to find.

At the edge, among communal nesting bees, are some species where the occasional open nest becomes an enticement to lay an egg while the neighbor bee is out foraging. Stealing the neighbor’s work means that the sneaky mother bee can get to work on her own brood cell that much quicker. Given enough generations, this behavior could eventually give rise to an entirely new cuckoo bee species.

Melecta pacifica, a burly, hairy bee with orange hair on its top mid-section and black hair on all other parts. Its legs appear to have sharp spike-like hair. — *Melecta pacifica*, image by Joe Dlugo

The majority of cuckoo bees are closely related to their hosts. Melecta, which prey on Anthophora, are an example of this behavior. Emery’s Rule states that cleptoparasitism is most often found between closely related species. Some other examples are Triepeolus (longhorn cuckoo bees), which target Melissodes (sunflower longhorn bees), and Sphecodes (blood bees), which stick close to home in the nests of sweat bees like Halictus, Lasioglossum, and Agapostemon. Close relations often have physical or biochemical similarities that make it easier for them to slip into a nest like a robber in the night. Thicker exoskeletons help the cuckoo bee withstand the stings or bites if they are caught in the act by the mother bee.

Cuckoo bees aren't sinister like actual thieves — they're using a survival strategy that leaves little trace behind. The host bee simply goes on foraging, possibly never noticing that she has been robbed. It seems paradoxical, but bees that steal from others are often a sign of a healthier, more diverse habitat.

Lisa Robinson is a bee enthusiast from Wenatchee. She is a board member and co-founder of the Washington Native Bee Society. When she's not behind a table at an event, or identifying native bees in iNaturalist, she is tending her lively desert pollinator garden.

A bee to know - The Pugnacious Leafcutter Bee

By Joe Dlugo

A pugnacious leafcutter bee female sinks her mandibles into the leaf edge of a fireweed. Adjacent to her is a chewed out half-circle from a previous visit. — *Megachile pugnata* chews the edges of a fireweed leaf. Note the leaf's spotting, a response to the damage. Image by Joe Dlugo

Leafcutter bees are one of the first native bees many watchers learn to recognize. They're plentiful through summer, partial to common garden flowers, and quick to move into a bee hotel or the dry plant stems you left standing last fall. Small, somewhat chunky, dark-bodied, white-banded — once you've met a few, you stop looking so closely.

Then one Saturday afternoon in July, the ordinary breaks. The largest leafcutter you've ever seen is working your blanketflowers, or the bull thistle you never got around to mowing. She wears golden, pollen-stained bands where the common ones wear white, has a blunt oversized head, and long jaws like scissors. Your new neighbor is a female pugnacious leafcutter bee (Megachile pugnata).

A female pugnacious leafcutter bee visiting a bright yellow blanketflower. — Blanket flower (Gailardia) is the pugnacious leafcutter bee's favorite flower. Image by Joe Dlugo

She is a thrill to watch, and she rewires what you've learned to expect from a leafcutter bee. She has the habit of visiting the same flowers roughly every twenty minutes and that fidelity makes her recognizable as an individual. She's a sunflower-loving bee, so the pattern under all her wandering is the composite flowers: the blanketflower, the bull thistle, the giant cardoon she somehow keeps stealing attention from and then, of course, feeding from. Because she's so recognizable, finding her off the flowers becomes its own small event. You find her snipping tiny leaf edges from the fuchsia you planted for the hummingbirds, or nesting in a nook of the old decorative driftwood. Once in a while she breaks her pattern. Improbably, you find her on a mint flower. This bee has personality.

For three weeks your garden has a roving focal point, the bee you want your dinner guests to meet. All the toil, all the patience, all the hard work you've put into this ground, here she is.

Joe Dlugo is a gardener from the historical hamlet of Tenino. He loves to raise bees and the flowers they need for their survival.

Featured Photos

A male urban digger bee tucked into a gentian flower with petals almost enclosing it as the bee peers out.

Aidan Hersh encountered this male urban digger bee, Anthophora urbana, on a remnant Palouse prairie. He has tucked himself into the protective petals of a pleated gentian (Gentiana affinis) flower. The flower and bee stayed still enough for him to shoot multiple photos for producing a focus stack, and the effort shows in the extraordinary detail and depth of field.

Look for the urban digger bee visiting a variety of flowers across the state, especially in gardens with plentiful catmint. Look for pleated gentian in the meadows of the far eastern regions of Washington.

Agapostemon subtilior, a brilliant green iridescent bee with abundant yellow pollen on her hind legs, walks atop the florets of a fleaband flower.

Tina Labonte learned photography because of her native bee obsession. While it's hard to choose a favorite, Agapostemon helped her get over her fear of bees and it's where her bee journey began. Agapostemon subtilior pictured was found on her neighbor's Asters in Kirkland. Tina runs our Facebook group so please join the fun and hey notified of events and learn identification via pictures posted by other members.

Coming This Fall: Native Bees of Eastern Washington Poster

A new WANBS poster is in the works, celebrating the bees that make a living east of the Cascade Divide! These are the bees of dry country, found on the blooms among sagebrush and ponderosa pine. Joe Dlugo and Lisa Robinson have been traveling the east side for four field seasons with the aim of finding a fitting example of bees. Here's a sneak preview of a few portraits. The full poster arrives this fall and you'll be able to pick one up at our events.