I would like to carry out various experiments on bees from the Euglossini tribe, but will need substantial numbers of individuals of both sexes. We casually fond some species, such as Euglossa viridisima nesting in a variety of situations, but my attempts to attract bees to nesting boxes placed so as to simulate those situations has had limited success. And I haven´t been able to find much useful infomation in the literature, Any ideas?
euglossine bees - important publications about sex ratio and longevity in the reason for the pollination of a variety of neotropical plants & the long-distance pollinators
(Jay, S. C. 1959. Factors affecting the laboratory rearing of 90; Roubik 2001)
& later © 2004
Conservation, Rearing and Management for Pollination, 97-103.
Thanks for the reply Marpha. Could you give me the full details for these references?
Hi Anne, we keep euglosines in our lab at USP-São Paulo: http://ecologia.ib.usp.br/beelab/home/
Ask Priscilla Baruffaldi Bittar or her supervisor, Prof. Isabel Alves dos Santos (check email addresses in website). They are doing that work;)
Good luck!
Dear Anne,
I raised Eulaema meriana and El. nigrita bees from nests found in the field. And also nests of a Euglossa, but it has been so long ago that I do not remember the species. They were given to me by Dave Roubik who had put out nest traps for bees. I do not recall how many he put out, but my impression is that it was a lot and the euglossas used them relatively infrequently. The El meriana took very little training to feed at feeders, but the El nigrita were fairly stupid flight cage animals, which is surprising given that they are about as weedy as an euglossine gets! Write to Dave or Santiago Ramírez and the people that are doing work at the field station near the Oso Peninsula in Costa Rica (Tom Elz? et al.). I did not get to go to the euglossine symposium held there last year, but I hear they do a lot of cage work with these bees.
Dear Anne,
you can find information about trap nesting in Eugloosa viridissima in:
Zimmermann Y., Roubik D. W., Quezada-Euan J. J. G., Paxton R. J. Eltz T. (2009) Single mating in orchid bees (Euglossa, Apinae) and implications for mate choice and social evolution. Insectes Sociaux 56:241-249.
Klaus
Dear Anne,
Tamara Pokorny published some work on euglossines done in the flight cage mentioned by James Ackerman:
Pokorny T, Lunau K, Eltz T (2014) Raising the Sugar Content – Orchid Bees Overcome the Constraints of Suction Feeding through Manipulation of Nectar and Pollen Provisions. PLoS ONE 9(11): e113823. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0113823
Hope this helps!
Klaus
Many thanks for all the useful information, in the next few weeks I will be reading and contacting everything/everyone suggested and will get back to you all either with more questions or some results. Have a great 2015!
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