Bee Larvae in Desert Found to Stay Dormant Until Rain Comes

Flowers in the desert go dormant for long periods of time, waiting for the rainy season to trigger the emergence of newly sprouted seeds. New evidence suggests that bees in the Chihuahuan Desert--which juts from northern Mexico into Arizona, New Mexico and Texas--do the same thing.

Entomologist Bryan N. Danforth of Cornell University reports in the current Proceedings of the Royal Society of London that larvae of the bees can survive for several years in the soil. Not all the bees emerge with each rainstorm, he found--a “bet-hedging” process that allows the species to survive if there is much less rain than normal. The bees, slightly smaller than houseflies, do not make honey and do not have queens and workers. “These are very egalitarian bees,” Danforth said.