In early spring, when the flowers blossom, bees go one by one to each plant, multiplying their numbers ECC’s campus.

This occurs through a process called pollination, where bees visit different flowers and spread the pollen from within the flower.

“A honey bee, when she goes to different flowers, she collects pollen and she collects nectar,” said Sarah Bass, associate dean of Communications and Behavioral Sciences and beekeeper.

The collecting doesn’t end there; there are multiple steps that are taken to reach the final result of the process.

“She doesn’t collect honey from the flower,” Bass said. “ She collects nectar.”

This is due to their special ability of being able to transform nectar into honey using their stomachs. 

“Honey bees have a very special kind of biology that allows them to convert nectar with pollen and organisms that they produce in their body. They have what’s called a honey stomach,” said Bass.

The nectar is then transported from their honey stomach, and a different bee continues the process. 

“When a honey bee comes back, she transfers the nectar to another honey bee,” said Bass.

This then turns into another process, where the other honey bee absorbs and releases this nectar and stores it in the honeycomb.

“The honey bee will process it in her honey stomach, and then what she spits out and stores in honeycomb is immature honey,” Bass said.

To process the honey, “They trance, they metabolize the nectar, and it converts to honey in the honey stomach. She then kind of spits it back out. And then what the bees do is they mature it,” Bass said. 

In the final stage, they mature it into honey by acting as fans to eliminate excess moisture.

“They do that by fanning their wings and causing the honey, the moisture, to evaporate,” said Bass.

Once the bees finish getting rid of the moisture, “that’s when it becomes honey”, said Bass. 

Pollination doesn’t just impact bees; it can also make an impact on people.

“They do a lot for pollination of the things that we eat,” said Bass.

Around the United States, honeybees are sent to pollinate vital agricultural vegetation.

“They[Farmers] literally truck boxes of colonies across the United States to go pollinate some of our like, most important crops,” said Devon Estevanes, Nature Program Coordinator for the Elgin Hawthorne Hill Nature Center.

Honey bees aren’t the only pollinators that can be seen around the ECC campus.

The U.S, “Probably has over 3000 different species of native bees,” said Estevanes.

Native means that they originated from the U.S., while non-native means that honeybees originated outside of it.

“They’re not native here, honeybees are from Europe,” said Estevanes.

Compared to honeybees, most native bees are solitary.

“It’s usually our native bees that are all solitary, so they live by themselves,” Estevanes said. 

The first step in their livelihood starts with the mother bee.

“It’s one mom who makes a hole and lays her eggs,” said Estevanes.

She also provides the eggs with ample nutrition, which is named “provisioning”, said Estevanes.

“She will put pollen, nectar in there, close it up, make another room, lay an egg, provision it,”  said Estevanes. 

Once she has done that for some time, she takes her leave and builds a new home.

“Then she does it a couple times, and then she’s gone. Sometimes she’ll make a new nest,” said Estevanes.

This is the same for many types of native bees, each making their nests in various environments.

“You have bees that live in wood. You have bees that collect mud, and they make mud nests with it… All different bees. Bees that collect leaves and make their nests out of these leaves in a hole,” said Estevanes.

Bees that nest and collect leaves are “leaf-cutter bees,” said Estevanes.

Leaf-cutter bees do this to keep their nests dry from harmful intruders.

“It has to do with keeping the nest safe…dry, and basically, it’s like a layer between the outside and the fungi and the inside,” said Estevanes. 

Bees such as mason bees nest in, “Narrow hollow stems of…reeds,” said Estevanes.

There are also bees that drink the sweat off people’s skin, “They’re called sweat bees,” Estevanes said.

“They get the name because some species, a lot of them, like to, they’ll drink your sweat. So they’ll land on you, and they’ll drink your sweat,” Estevanes said.

Although they don’t display behaviour of aggression, if provoked, they may sting.

“They’re not aggressive. But like, if you have one right here and you close your arm, they’re gonna go, oh…it’s eating me, and they’ll sting you,” said Estevanes.

There are even bees that pollinate squash plants, making it possible for them to grow.

“Squash bees pollinate squash plants, like pumpkins and melons,” said Estevanes.

Their ability to pollinate squash plants makes them essential due to being, “specialized in pollinating those plants,” said Estevanes.

Native bees’ pollination not only benefits them, but it can also benefit the environment.

Plants that are native depend on their pollination, and since native bees have been around longer than honeybees, they do it more efficiently. 

“Native bees evolved, you know, hundreds of thousands of years over time, with these same plants. They evolved to pollinate our native plants,” Estevanes said.

If there were to be a decline in native bees, native plants would also suffer.

“You would also see decline in our native plants and our native flowers, too,” Estevanes said.

Compared to honeybees, native bees may not be as social, but there are some that have social similarities, such as the bumblebee.

Bumblebees fall in the social category, while honeybees fall in the eusocial one.

“So that’s what honey bees are. It’s eusocial. And that has to do with their caste system, their division of labor, and having a queen, whereas bumblebees are more considered just being social,” Estevanes said.

Honeybees display a different social hierarchy that is absent from native bees.

Bumblebees have a similar but simplified way of running their social system.

“They have a queen, a single queen, who lays all the eggs, and then they have worker bees who are the female offspring of the Queen, so all girls, and they do have drones[Males],” Estevanes said. 

Honeybees can also survive through the winter, while bumblebees cannot.

“In the winter, for bumblebees, they all die, except for the queen,” Estevanes said.

This is one of the reasons that honeybees are depended upon more for honey than bumblebees.

“Bumble bees do produce honey, but not to the extent that a honey bee does,” Bass said. 

Since honey bee colonies are so large in numbers, their social system is bound to be complex.

They [Honeybees] live in large colonies, anywhere between 10,000-40,000 bees,” Bass said.

Despite these differences, native bees and honey bees both share similarities when differentiating males and females.

“Male bees can’t sting. So the only reason why females can sting is because their stinger is their egg layer. It’s called an ovipositor,” Estevanes said.

At certain times, such as winter, males can be expected to be expelled from the colony because their abilities are limited compared to females.

“And part of the reason why they don’t have males all the time, and like, in the wintertime for honey bees, they kick all the males out. They let them die, because they don’t do anything,”  Estevanes said.

To simply put it, their job is, “To just mate with the Queen,” Estevanes said.

Some native bees, such as mason bees, are also starting to be used for pollinating important crops.

“Similar things with Mason bees, where you’re encouraging mason bees to live and to nest near your apple orchards,” Estevanes said

Mason bees are being used recently since, “They’re also really good pollinators and they’re native,” Estevanes said

While pollination for both native and non-native bees is nearly identical, it can also be different.

Honeybees,  “They’re what we call a generalist species,” this would mean that they’ll generally eat anything,” Estevanes said.

Native bees often times fall into a different category where they select a number of flowers to pollinate.

“Specialist bees will only go to certain plants, like there’s a…bee that will only feed on asters,” said Nursery Manager for Platt Hill Nursery, Christine Sieff.

These differences also highlight the necessity of planting native plants.

Estevanes put it as, “If you’re planting plants for native bees, you’re also planting plants for honey bees, but if you’re planting plants for honey bees, you’re not always planting plants for native bees.”

Bees aren’t the only pollinators around; butterflies also help with the pollination process of a plant.

“They [butterflies] really are important for making sure that we have flowers and we have fruits and we have vegetables, and all these things,” said Justin Robertson, dean of Communications and Behavioral Sciences.

Monarch butterflies can be spotted around the campus and are distinguished by their coloration and size.

“Monarch butterflies are usually pretty easy to identify because of the black and orange…They’re also large butterflies,” said Art Professor Kara Weyand.

Whether it is preserving native or non-native pollinators, they each have an essential role. Next time, you walk outside in the spring weather on the ECC campus, look at all the plants and see if you can spot a pollinator.