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GROUND-NESTING BEES

You think you know what bees are all about: They make honey and live in hives with a queen and sting you sometimes, right? Well, all this is true about some bees, but just like there are lots of different kinds of rodents — big ones and small ones, species that live in trees and underground, species that love to nest together and others that just want to be left alone — Earth is home to approximately 20,000 species of bees, and they're all a little different.

Honey bees live in hives with a queen who's in charge of procreation in the colony. But most bees on the planet aren't honey bees — in fact, there are only a handful of honey bee species in the world. However, every continent has its own native bees, which occupy most spots on the planet, from the Arctic, to deserts, tropical forests, grasslands and most places in between. In North America, there are around 4,000 species, with new species being discovered all the time. Surprisingly, most bees are solitary, meaning that each mother bee provides for her own nest, and about 70 percent of native bees live in the ground.

Ground nesting bees like a variety of different ground types, but most often they nest in dry, hard-packed soil, similar to places where you might see an ant's nest.

A solitary bee nest is a tube about 6 inches (15 centimeters) long, excavated in dry soil by a female bee. There are many challenges that come from nesting in the ground: predators; moisture and flooding; intense heat; nest disturbance by people, vehicles, other large animals.

Because most of us associate bees with a honey bee's propensity to sting, we often try to get rid of bees in our yards and around our houses. However, ground nesting bees aren't dangerous. Many solitary bees are very tiny — smaller than a grain of rice — and therefore too small to sting. If they are able to sting, their venom is too weak to do much damage