Bumblebees workers feeding upon honeydew from aphids on beech leaves

The noise is what attracted my attention as I walked down the road alongside a beech hedge. I heard a loud buzzing and I noticed that several species of bumblebees were flying in between the leaves and landing on the uppermost sides and walking underneath the leaves. There were no flowers present for them to show an interest so why were they visiting a flowerless beach hedge, which would itself represent a departure from the classic, bee forages on flowers for nectar or pollen relationship? Upon closer examination, I saw numerous Woolly beech aphids, Phyllaphis fagi. That could only mean one thing. Honeydew!

Woolly beech aphids found underneath the beech leaves suck the sap and then excrete the sticky waste which can cause small particles of soot to stick to the leaves of trees. This was a dense and well-clipped hedge and I could find no traces of any black soot, as seen on tree leaves, probably I guess because it was neatly trimmed and this restricted the airflow which carries the fungi spores or soot particles.  Honeydew is what you can find as droplets on your car especially when parked under a sycamore tree.

That’s why the bumblebee workers went to the beech for a drink!!

This show to me that perhaps, when flowers are in short supply, could we offer wild bees a substitute sugar resource until the next flowers bloom? I have tried this with bumblebees on the platform of my bumblebee nest box, with a fructose water solution inside the bright yellow lid of a Marmite jar, (with no traces of Marmite!!). Bumblebees did use it but so did social wasps and ants! Not a good idea for my bumblebee nests to be right next to wasps! So I stopped supplying it.

Recent research from the USA has found that native solitary bees there also forage on honeydew, a non-floral sugar when floral nectar (sugar) is scarce. They discuss how they found the honeydew, as opposed to finding nectar.  Bees, find nectar on plants using various complex cues when foraging. I expect exactly the same process is used by our native solitary bees and it is something I will now look out for and see if I can film it.

Bees without flowers: Before Peak Bloom, Diverse Native Bees Find Insect-Produced Honeydew Sugars.

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