Mission save the bees
Posted on June 25, 2026 at 4:14 PM by Achilles Seastrom
Agent, your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to save Iowa’s bees. It’s summer. The bees are buzzing about. They pollinate our flowers which makes Iowa beautiful and helps grow our food.
Our bees need help, though. They face habitat loss, competition from nonnative bees and pesticides that can hurt them. Here’s what you need to know about Iowa’s bees to begin your mission.
Habitat:
You probably know some bees live in big, lumpy hives that hang from trees. Most of Iowa’s bees don’t! To save Iowa’s bees, you’ll need to know more about their homes. Most of Iowa’s different native bee species will live in one of three places; underground burrows, in whatever hole they can find, or inside hollow plant stems.
Some species dig burrows in the ground, like ants. Each bee gets their own little burrow – like a bedroom! Others live in a group of burrows, like little bee neighborhoods. Scientists call these “aggregations.”
Other Iowa bees will look for dry, enclosed spaces, like abandoned rodent tunnels or holes in human structures.
Finally, some of Iowa’s native bees make homes inside hollow stems. They carry the spongey interior, or “pith” of the stem away. Once they’ve finished, they have a nice, dry place to lay their eggs.
Life Cycle:
Before you start your mission, it’s imperative that you also learn about the life cycle of Iowa’s bees.
Most of Iowa’s native bees follow similar life cycles. They emerge from their winter shelters in the spring and begin to pollinate. Bees pollinate flowers all through spring, summer and fall. Winter is the only time no bees are out doing work.
Different bees handle winter in different ways. Adult bees from most species will die before winter. It’s sad, but it’s part of bee life. Luckily, all species have ways of making sure there are new bees next spring! Some species lay eggs in safe spaces like hollow stems or in underground tunnels made specially for the new bee babies. During winter, these eggs develop even without mature bees around.
The way bumble bees survive winter is unique. Queen bees, the fertile female bees, will overwinter in safe, dry spaces like leaflitter on the ground or in hollow spaces under tree bark. In early spring, all the bumble bees you see are female!
Diet:
Plants and bees have a synergistic relationship. In other words, bees and plants benefit from each other. Bees get food, and flowers are pollinated, which is how they make more flowers!
Bees eat pollen and nectar produced by flowers. Pollen sticks to the hairs. Bees use these hairs to carry the pollen home as food for themselves or their larvae.
Bees also carry the pollen to the other flowers they land on. Since plants need pollen from other flowers to reproduce, bees are doing plants a favor by spreading pollen around. Pollination means more plants and more plants means more flowers. More flowers means even more food for bees!
Conservation:
Now that you know the bee basics, it’s time to cover bee conservation. Iowa’s bees have ecosystem needs that help them survive. It’s your mission to help protect and restore those parts of Iowa’s ecosystems!
First, make sure all of Iowa’s native bee species have a place to live and lay eggs. During the summer keep some patches of ground undisturbed so bees can burrow, and leave last year’s dry plant stems alone for our stem-nesting bees. A perfectly cleaned lawn can look beautiful, but resist the urge to plant lawn grass in every corner or clear every dead stem and leaf from the garden! Your lawn will come alive with the blooms pollinated by bees if you do.
The second way to support bee conservation is by planting native flowering species. Native bees and native plants evolved together. Some native flowers rely on specific native pollinators and some of Iowa’s native bees rely on specific native flowers to survive. Iowa’s native bees and native plants have an important relationship we need to protect!
Finally, limiting pesticide use is also an important part of bee conservation. People use pesticides to keep bugs out of their houses or gardens. Unfortunately, pesticides can kill the good bugs too. A pesticide used to stop slugs from eating all the tomato plants can also kill all the bees pollinating those tomato plants. The best way to keep bees safe from pesticides is to find other control methods for pest species. Firefly larvae, for example, love to snack on slugs, so encouraging firefly habitats in your garden can help with the slug problem!
Meet the bees:
Iowa’s bees are all incredibly interesting and important to conserve. I’m about to introduce you to some of the bees under your protection, Agent. This isn’t all of Iowa’s bees, though. Iowa has up to 400 individual native bee species.
I would love to tell you about every single bee in Iowa but, not only are there too many for me to write about, but we also don’t know much about some of them. If some enterprising young agent wants to study the bees when they get a little older, maybe we’ll know more about each bee species in Iowa. Until then, Agent, it’s time for you to meet the bees.
Bumble Bees
Description: These bright, buzzing, fuzzy-wuzzy buddies are the most bee-looking bee in the bee world. They’re round, they’re beautifully striped in bright yellow and they even look a little cuddly – if they weren’t a bee.
Special Skill: Bumble bees are prolific pollinators, and they use their buzzing powers for good. They’re equipped with a special pollinating skill: “buzz pollination.” When bumble bees land on flowers, they shake really, really fast. They shake so hard they leave pollen on plants!
Cellophane Bees
Description: Our cellophane bees are long and thin. They have less hair than bumble bees and the hair they do have isn’t as bright as bumble bees’ yellow stripes. Sometimes cellophane bees have hair so light in color that you can barely see it (like my grandpa’s hair). Where they don’t have hair, their bodies tend to be dark in color, like a delicious blackberry.
Special Skill: The cellophane bee’s special skill is an amazing waterproofing superpower! Cellophane bees live alone in underground nests. They cover their nests in a plastic-like substance that they secrete from their abdomen (isn’t that wild?). The substance prevents water or mold from hurting their eggs. This secretion isn’t exactly plastic, but it’s so similar that we named these bees after a kind of plastic called cellophane. Cellophane is a thin, see-through plastic. You’ve probably seen it used to wrap up candy or food.
Mason Bees
Description: Mason bees are dark in color and have a metallic sheen. They also don’t have much hair. The hair they have sticks straight up like a crazy hairdo.
Special Skill: Mason bees use mud to build walls, much like a mason might do with bricks. They use this skill when they nest. When female mason bees lay their eggs in hollow plant stems, she uses her masonry skills to build a wall between each egg.
Long-Horned Bees
Description: Male long-horned bees have long antennae. They look a little like horns! Females have shorter antennae. Scientists have a term for when males and females in one species look different. They call it “sexual dimorphism.”
Special Skill: The long-horned bee’s special skill is specialization. When a bee is a specialist, it prefers a specific kind of plant. Bees that don’t have many plant preferences are called generalists, but many long-horned bees are specialists. The Eastern thistle long-horned bee, which is found in Iowa, specializes in pollinating thistles, which are also native to Iowa.
