Native Bees of the South Sound/ Joe Dlugo

Emerging from the nooks and crannies of your yard this spring are thousands of six-legged furry beasts. They can be the size of a flea or as big as a peanut.  They can range in color from cardinal red to rich metallic green.  They will make sure you have cucumbers to eat and there are berries for the birds in fall.  They are bees, but maybe not the kind you’re used to.

Everyone has heard of the honeybee or the bumblebee, but what about the resin, mason, or leafcutter bee?  The sweat bee, the nomad bee, or the coelixys cuckoo bee?   It turns out that wherever you are in the South Sound, if there are flowers to be found there’s the opportunity to discover these species and more. You’ll see images and gain insights on how to observe, identify and manage this dazzling area of local bee diversity.

Joe Dlugo is a lifelong naturalist who owns a lot of field guides.  He also frequently finds himself carrying a camera. One day not long after the birth of his daughter he realized that he couldn’t walk out of the 50’ range of the baby monitor. This severely limited his ability to photograph birds, so he honed his lenses on the garden flowers out his front stoop.  What he found was astounding – countless species of bees!

Joe Dlugo’s work can be found on the web, on Facebook: “Bee Safari;”  and Instagram: “bee_safari.”