New Breed of Bees Buzz New York City

[Hum]

NEW YORK -- A new bee is buzzing in New York City. The tiny insect, the size of a sesame seed, sips the sweet nectar of the city -- sweat, The Wall Street Journal reports.

"They use humans as a salt lick," according to entomologist John Ascher, who netted the first known specimen of the species in 2010 while strolling in Brooklyn's Prospect Park near his home. "They land on your arm and lap up the sweat."

North America is home to thousands of species of native bees. But they have long been overshadowed by imported honeybees, prized for their honey and beeswax since the time of the Pharaohs and a mainstay of commercial agriculture. Now, native bees are generating serious buzz.

So puzzling was the greenish-blue city bee he netted, though, that it took 41-year-old Ascher -- who oversees a digital catalog of 700,000 bee specimens at the American Museum of Natural History -- months to pinpoint its proper place in the insect kingdom.

In the end, only DNA testing by sweat bee specialist Jason Gibbs at Cornell University could identify its niche. Last November, they announced the discovery of Lasioglossum gotham, in a peer-reviewed journal called Zootaxa. The newbie joined the growing catalog of easily-overlooked wild native bees.

Sweat bees do not have a high profile outside academic circles. Unlike honeybees, which originally were imported from Europe, native bees do not make much honey. To their credit, though, sweat bees rarely sting; their occasional pinprick registers a one on the Schmidt Sting Pain Index, the lowest on the four-point scale.

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[The Rev]

That's really creepy... :-p

[remixedcat]

sweat bees are nothing new... I see em all the time by lakes and stuff like that... they look a cross between a small skeeter and a bee. they love to hang out in tents... one time I went camping I left the flap open for half an hour, come back, and there are 10 of those buggers in my tent... arrg... LOL

[Hum]

I just hope these won't mate with Killer bees. :laugh: