Two Long‑horned Bees and Their Shared Flower Bed
Yesterday evening, during my nightly round of the garden, I stopped to check a false sunflower where I had spotted two long‑horned bees (of the genus Melissodes) that morning, both likely males. To my surprise, there they were again, this time sleeping head to head right at the interface between the central disk and the ray flowers, rather than at a small distance from one another as they had been the night before.
Wedged there securely, they were gently sheltered from wind and weather by the surrounding petals and by the low position of this particular flower beneath the taller blooms around it. It is a quietly touching little sleep arrangement. Male long‑horned bees often spend the night out on vegetation or in flowers like this, because they do not have nests of their own to return to. Females, in contrast, usually sleep inside the underground nests they have dug, where they are also storing pollen for their larvae.
It makes sense that these males sleep close to the patch of flowers they patrol and use during the day. By bedding down right in their foraging patch, they minimize energy spent searching for food the next morning, and they “know” their way back into this familiar matrix of blooms. These small bachelor sleepovers on flowers are a characteristic part of male long‑horned bee life, a small but beautiful detail in their natural history.
I am now officially committed to stalking them, or rather checking on them evening and morning, to see how faithfully they return to this same flower and how their sleeping arrangements change over time. And so I did. This morning they were still there, sleeping longer than I do. At some point in the night, they had shifted slightly apart, a tiny rearrangement in their shared flower bed. I am smitten.
📷 Melissodes | © Claire O'Neill, please credit accordingly.
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