Passport to Texas

This is Passport to Texas

[SFX—buzzing]

06—Most people when you say the word ‘bee’ their mind automatically goes to the European honeybee.

Michael Warriner, an invertebrate biologist with Texas Parks and Wildlife, says Texas has plenty of native bee species…they’re just not as attention grabbing as honeybees.

08—Most of our bees are called solitary bees. They live on their own; they don’t live in big colonies. They don’t make honey, per se.

While solitary bees are easy to miss and dismiss, our native bumblebees are not.

05—Bumblebees are basically big flying balls of fur.

These large furry slow moving insects with their distinctive black and yellow markings deserve our attention and appreciation.

17—Because they’re so tied into the plant life here. They’ve adapted through hundreds of thousands of years to pollinate these plants, and these plants are dependent on native bees, less so honeybees. Honeybees aren’t necessarily geared toward pollinating our native plants.

But times are getting tough for our native bees.

08—A lot of people know about honeybee decline. Less well-known are the threats facing a lot of our native bees like bumblebees.

We’ll hear about that on tomorrow’s show.

That’s our show for today…we record our series at The Block House…and Joel Block engineers our program.

For Texas Parks and Wildlife, I’m Cecilia Nasti

Native Texas Bumblebees Play Now | Play in Popup | Download