Buzz off, buzz on: Native bee exhibits in zoos

DavidBrown

DavidBrown

Well-Known Member
15+ year member
Honey bee colonies are fairly common exhibits in insect zoos and science museums.

Are there any exhibits of native bees in any zoos, botanic gardens, natural history museums, or other institutions that people have seen? Native bees here would be defined as wild bees native to the area where the zoo or institution exhibit them is.

Honey bees have gotten a lot of attention in recent years as their populations have been reduced in several areas, but the local extinction and endangerment of wild bee species in their local ecosystems has gone largely unnoticed by the mainstream media. Wild bees are very important pollinators also and perhaps zoos could help with raising their profile.
 
I believe quite a few zoos have “bee friendly” gardens but I don’t know any dedicated exhibits besides the one SeaWorld San Diego had in the Animal Connections building.
 
I know San Diego Zoo will have a working bee colony as part of their new Wildlife Explorers Basecamp. It’s been proposed that honey that is to be produced at the zoo will be enrichment for animals on zoo property. I’ll reply back to this thread when it debuts to report on the bee habitat!
 
I am not aware of any native bee exhibits in any European zoo, though honeybees are more than abundant. Due to their more solitary and secretive nature (and by generally being much smaller), they wouldn't make for an excellent exhibit. An increasing number of zoos is providing "insect hotels", which can be used as nesting sites for part of the native bee fauna (many more nest in the ground, so don't profit...). Together with increasing native flower abundance, this is a way that zoos are trying to promote local biodiversity.

Apenheul, the Netherlands has created an insect hotel of several hundred metres in length. I am curious to see whether it works, but it makes for an impressive sight:
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@Geert , this shows a tiny part of the wall.
 
North Carolina Zoo has a bee exhibit, with the bees being free ranging, but I believe they are European honey bees (ironically in the North American section of the zoo).
 
All the bee exhibits I've seen have been honeybees, and I think there's a particular reason for this. Honeybees are highly colonial and thus are easy to see on display, whereas many native bees like bumblebees and carpenter bees are either small nests or solitary. Such displays would likely be very easy to overlook, being so small. Versus the large and extensive hives of the honeybee that are also easy to display and recognizable. Even with a free-ranging colony of honeybees, there's also almost always bees in the hive for viewing, something much harder to achieve with a solitary species. Leafcutter and carpenter bees I would imagine to be particularly hard to exhibit, as they are solitary and merely create an egg tunnel then move to the next one.
 
Great Argus said:
All the bee exhibits I've seen have been honeybees, and I think there's a particular reason for this. Honeybees are highly colonial and thus are easy to see on display, whereas many native bees like bumblebees and carpenter bees are either small nests or solitary. Such displays would likely be very easy to overlook, being so small. Versus the large and extensive hives of the honeybee that are also easy to display and recognizable. Even with a free-ranging colony of honeybees, there's also almost always bees in the hive for viewing, something much harder to achieve with a solitary species. Leafcutter and carpenter bees I would imagine to be particularly hard to exhibit, as they are solitary and merely create an egg tunnel then move to the next one.
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Como Park's third exhibited bee species is the Alfalfa Leafcutter Bee.
 
Twenty odd years ago ,Birmingham Nature Centre used to have a bee hive which had a glass plate over one side which enabled you to see the workings of daily bee life. It’s not there now which is a shame, because it was very popular, especially with school projects
 
Melbourne Museum have a display for Sugarbag Bees (Tetragonula carbonaria), while not found in the Melbourne area, are native to Australia. I’m unsure if there are still bees in there as I haven’t seen any on my last few visits
 
Lincs wildlife park have a signed Western honey bee exhibit and they do beekeeping talks and demos and sell the honey in the shop. It's a fun spot to visit and is at the entry to the quarry / lake just past the lions...one to see in good weather (as sometimes they close the paths in that area). Hives are located behind an insect screen (obviously the bees can go in and out).
 
Strathmorezoo said:
Twenty odd years ago ,Birmingham Nature Centre used to have a bee hive which had a glass plate over one side which enabled you to see the workings of daily bee life. It’s not there now which is a shame, because it was very popular, especially with school projects
Click to expand...

The British Wildlife Centre has a similar exhibit which was still ther eon my last visit a couple of years ago. There was also one in the Scarborough Woodend Natural History Museum until it was pointlessly and scandalously closed a decade of so ago to make way for a "Creative Industires Hub" which could have been shoved into any old office block.
 
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