{"id":715102,"date":"2026-08-14T16:35:05","date_gmt":"2026-08-14T20:35:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/?p=715102"},"modified":"2026-08-14T20:42:38","modified_gmt":"2026-08-15T00:42:38","slug":"why-are-bees-important-honeybees-solitary-bees-wasps-715102","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/why-are-bees-important-honeybees-solitary-bees-wasps-715102\/","title":{"rendered":"20,000 ways to bee: Everything you want to know about bees"},"content":{"rendered":"

Professor Bob Minckley answers common questions about the surprisingly diverse\u2014and downright weird\u2014world of Anthophila.<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Nearly everyone knows the western honeybee (Apis mellifera<\/em>)\u2014that fuzzy, golden brown, black-banded bee. It\u2019s a top-of-mind bee for its honey production and broad importance in agriculture. Not to mention the way it gutted a generation that grew up having seen the 1991 film My Girl<\/em> and, more recently, the way Jerry Seinfeld\u2019s Bee Movie<\/em> (2007) anthropomorphized the insect. <\/em>But those also happen to be among the reasons why entomologist Bob Minckley<\/a>, a professor of instruction in biology<\/a> at the University of Rochester<\/a>, didn\u2019t include them in his new edited book, The Book of Bees: A Life-Size Guide to Bees Worldwide<\/em><\/a> (University of Chicago Press).<\/p>\n

\"Circle
Biology and entomologist Bob Minckley (URochester photo \/ J. Adam Fenster)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Minckley\u2019s book celebrates the differences of more than 400 kinds of bees with bold photography and details about each species\u2019 history, behavior, and interactions with flowers and humans. While the western honeybee didn\u2019t make the cut, two subspecies did: the Cape honeybee (Apis mellifera capensis<\/em>) and the Africanized honeybee (Apis mellifera scutellata<\/em>).<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I decided I wanted to work on bees, I also decided I wasn\u2019t going to work on honeybees,\u201d Minckley says. \u201cSo, I really never paid attention to social bees because there are so many solitary bees. Then I decided to write this book, and I had to read all this literature on social bees that is actually very cool. I thought, \u2018Why didn\u2019t I read this when I was 25 years old?\u2019 It was a lot of fun\u2014and a little embarrassing\u2014learning about all the bees I had been ignoring.\u201d<\/p>\n

Minckley is well known for his long-term field studies on solitary bees and bee biodiversity, documented in his coauthored book The Solitary Bees: Biology, Evolution, and Conservation<\/em><\/a> (Princeton University Press, 2019). He has also amassed a collection of 62,000 bees, one of which is a sweat bee, Lasioglossum minckleyi<\/em>, named in his honor.<\/p>\n

Have a question about bees? Minckley\u2019s an excellent resource.<\/p>\n

\"Rows
BEE-T THE HEAT:<\/strong> The specimens in Minckley\u2019s collection have established that the greatest concentration of bee species in the world occurs in the desert areas of western North America. (URochester photo \/ J. Adam Fenster)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Professor Bob Minckley answers common questions about the surprisingly diverse\u2014and downright weird\u2014world of bees.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1152,"featured_media":715162,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[116],"tags":[43242,18722,16072],"class_list":["post-715102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sci-tech","tag-bob-minckley","tag-department-of-biology","tag-school-of-arts-and-sciences"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n20,000 ways to bee: Everything you want to know about bees<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Professor Bob Minckley answers common questions about the surprisingly diverse\u2014and downright weird\u2014world of bees.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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