FACULTY NEWS

Molumby out in the field.

Biologist Buzzes about Local Bees

"There are 63 species of bees in urban areas of Chicago," says Alan Molumby, clinical assistant professor of biological sciences.

With its assortment of hand-me-down furniture, Molumby’s office looks half laboratory and half basement rec room, but his insect specimen boxes are the stuff of serious science. Housing scores of tiny bee specimens impaled on mounting pins, they tell a story about Chicago’s ecology that few people know.  He frequently gives public lectures about bees to groups in and around Chicago. Many in his audience are naturalists interested in conservation. Most have a good understanding of native plants but not insects.

"Many people are surprised to learn there are bees here other than honey bees," he says.  "Most are surprised to learn there are about 3,000 species of bees in North America, and they’re surprised to learn that no honey bee is native. They’re introduced."  European honey bees are often trucked to farms to provide pollination services, as are non-native leaf-cutter bees. A few species of bumble bees also bummed a ride to these shores. Molumby calls such bees "weeds," saying they can survive almost anywhere.

Molumby is less interested in these "weeds" than in native bees that live in small areas of local forest preserves, with particular tastes for native flowers.  He also wants to know how immigrant human settlement and urbanization have fragmented native bee habitat.  Unlike social honey and bumble bees, many native bees are solitary, not living in hives or nests, but in sand or bits of logs.

"Solitary bees will rarely forage more than 200 meters (about 600 feet) from where they came. Populations tend to drift, but with the urbanized hostile environments that people built, bee populations can’t diffuse very far." 

Forest preserves are among the few remaining refuges for native bees. Molumby says people who live near preserves can help bees by adding native plant species to attract the insects to their gardens.  "It provides habitat for bees to diffuse from one forest preserve to another. Native bee populations are extremely erratic, exhibiting something called metapopulation dynamics—meaning they’ll live one place one year, but won’t be present in that perfectly suitable habitat the next. It’s only by linking hundreds of these populations together that the metapopulation is stable."

Molumby got interested in bees while doing his doctoral dissertation on the evolution of social behavior.  "Bees have both solitary and social members and strange combinations in between. I was interested in what they could teach me about evolution," he says.  Now he’s more interested in what bees of the city can teach us about environmental change and preserving habitat.

"Nature is complex," says Molumby.  "You just can’t smooth out the rough edges. Bees need the ditches, the mud and the brambles between the crops. That’s where bees live. Tidy up too much and you lose complexity, and you lose bees."

Adapted from a UIC News Bureau press release by Paul Francuch, October 7, 2009.