Blog Details

Have You Seen One of These Fuzzy Bees?

Usually our blog posts are about how you can reduce your exposure to pests or about how you can eliminate them once you are exposed. This article will be a bit different. In this article we would like to discuss two species of bee which researches are asking the general public if they have seen.

These two species of rare bee are found in the scrub and pine areas of northern and central Florida. They are obscure bees and the more data researchers have the better. Here are the two bee species in question:

Southeastern Plasterer Bee (Caupolicana electa)

This bee has been spotted all the way up to North Carolina but most is found in Florida. It can be found in scrub, sandhill and pine habitats. Very little is known about this rare bee. They are highly scarce and hopes are that reaching out to the general public can help fill in missing data on this species of bee.

The Scrub Giant Plasterer Bee (Caupolicana floridana)

This bee is in similar habitats and are found primarily in Florida and Georgia. Speaking of which, we hear there is a big football game coming up this weekend. But we digress.

This species of bee is also not very common and as Jaret Daniels, curator at the Florida Museum’s McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity, says it is “highly overlooked”. He went on to say “Museum specimens (of the bees in question) are few and scattered, and our knowledge of their range is incredibly incomplete.”

These two bees flight patterns coincide with autumn winds and are most often noticed by hikers and nature observers.

If you have seen either one of these bees and even better have taken high quality photos of them, please feel free to upload and report them at the inaturalist project page.

Projects like these help track rare and endangered bees and can help us understand how best to keep them from disappearing from the face of the Earth. As the natural scrub lands disappear from our beautiful state, so do various species of animal, reptile, insect and plant. Protecting Florida’s vulnerable flora and fauna should be a cause we can all get behind. There are various ways the public can chip in. Everything from helping to report bee sightings to actually contributing dollars to a cause are available.