Solitary Bees Sharing Honey Bee Comb

A substantial aggregation of mason bees was found recently in Ohio (GPS coordinates 40.1041 N 81.1630W), nesting inside a honey bee colony (Figure 1). The cells seemed to have had wax buildup as the bees developed, suggesting that honey bee might have been present during the summer while these mason bees were developing (Journal of Apicultural Research DOI: 10.1080/00218839.2020.1740405). A lesson of this finding is that we might need to study other possible artificial nests for mason bees, with architecture similar to honey bee combs.