Can't tell a Honeybee from a Bumble Bee? This New Tool May Help!

Bees are more than honey bees. They’re bumble bees, carpenter bees, cuckoo bees and others, and you can identify more than a dozen of them - types you’re likely to see on your farm or in your landscape - using a new pocket card from The Ohio State University.

It’s just in time for this week’s National Pollinator Week, June 20-26, which is meant to raise awareness of pollinators - bees and their buddies - and the good they do for crops and in nature.
“Bees are essential pollinators,” said the card’s developer, Denise Ellsworth, who’s the program director of the Honey Bee and Native Pollinator Education Program in Ohio State’s College of Food, Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. “They’re beautiful, important and diverse creatures that positively impact our lives.”

Single copies of Common Bees of Ohio, a 4-by-6-inch laminated card, are free through June 30 by sending a self-addressed, stamped, business-size envelope to Ellsworth at Department of Entomology, OARDC, The Ohio State University, 1680 Madison Ave., Wooster, OH 44691. If you miss the deadline, you can buy the card throughout the year in quantities of 25 - good for handing out to groups - for $9.99 from the college’s online store at go.osu.edu/BeeID.