Just like people who are looking for a perfect place to live, some female bees search for the ideal place to build their nests.

Agricultural Research Service (ARS) entomologist Theresa L. Pitts-Singer is discovering more about the “nesting cues” that influence wild bees’ house-hunting decisions. It’s information that may help entice more of the hardworking pollinators to take up residence in new, ready-to-occupy nesting structures that growers and beekeepers provide.

Some bees like living in snug, dark recesses called “nesting cavities.” These range from deep holes drilled into wooden boards, to bundles of cardboard tubes or hollow reeds. Growers and beekeepers place bee housing in orchards and fields where they need the bees to live and work.

Wild bees augment the work of the European honey bee, currently plagued by a puzzling problem known as colony collapse disorder. That’s according to Pitts-Singer, with the ARS Pollinating Insect Biology, Management and Systematics Research Unit in Logan, Utah.

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