What exactly are wild bees?
About 580 species of bees live in Germany. Only the eusocial honey bee became a domestic animal as a producer of honey. All others we call wild bees.
The most common are solitary bees: Each female builds her own nest with food supply for each larva. Bumblebees also belong to the wild bees. Their queens establish a short-lived state in spring, which does not overwinter. A special case are the so-called cuckoo bees, which lay their eggs in other bees' nests as brood parasites.
Bees are closely related to wasps. The latter feed their brood with animal food. Bees, on the other hand, feed their offspring in a vegetarian way, with flower pollen and nectar. While all other insects fly to flowers only to satisfy their own hunger, bees may visit thousands of flowers a day to find food for their brood. This makes wild bees the most important pollinators of many wild and cultivated plants.
The demands on the nesting site vary. About three-quarters of the species nest underground, e.g., in sparsely vegetated sandy soil, clayey bluffs, or quarry edges. The others use, for example, beetle burrows in wood, pithy or hollow stems, empty snail shells, or abandoned oak galls to build aboveground nests.
Image caption: Seven of over a hundred species of wild bees that live here in the Botanical Garden
English translation of the information panel in the Botanical Garden. Original German text: Dr. Barbara Ditsch, Mandy Fritzsche