The oldest bee fossil found so far is 65 million years old, but scientists believe that bees have been around for 120 million years. Bees have been around for so long; it’s no surprise that they have adapted to the world humans have created – this world full of plastic waste. Can you believe they have started constructing their beehives entirely out of plastic!
Scientists from Argentina’s National Agricultural Technology Institute found plastic bee nests in the spring and summer of 2017-2018. A team led by Mariana Allasino reported in the journal Apidologie that the nest was located at a site where they had laid 63 trap nests around crop fields. Trap nests are a kind of “bee hotel” with holes, similar to the honeycomb holes, where bees can fill them with any material they like, such as mud, leaves, stones, petals or resin. They build these materials into a cozy nest within the cavity, separated into brood cells, each of which holds a growing larva.
There were only three nests the bees were using. Two of them were built with flower petals and mud, and five healthy bees emerged from them. The third was constructed solely out of two types of plastic, a thick white plastic, and one of which appeared to be a blue plastic shopping bag. Within the plastic nest, one bee died, and one survived – indicating that plastic is not the best choice of building material, but it might not be the worst, either. Scientists have previously documented the use of plastic by bees; however, this is the first time that the nest is made solely out of plastic.
While the team was uncertain what species of bee that had built the nest, the other two nests in the field were constructed by Megachile jenseni, a species closely related to the alfalfa leafcutter bee (Megachile rotundata). These are solitary bees that don’t build hives or colonies but are highly efficient pollinators of crops. The alfalfa leafcutter bee, originally native to Europe, cuts leaves to line its nests, similar to how the bees trimmed the plastic fragments. And also, in North America, scientists have documented this particular bee using plastic to build individual brood cells within a larger nest.
It isn’t known where the plastic came from, nor why the bees used this material over organic materials, although the study notes that agricultural plastic waste in the area is immense and often not disposed of properly. Plastics are becoming an increasing problem across the world. Much of the plastic pollution accumulates easier in the ocean and is most plainly seen. However, this bee nest shows, the problem is also being felt in the terrestrial ecosystems.
Nonetheless, the researchers were very positive about their discovery, arguing that it demonstrates the incredible versatility of bees to adapt to a changing environment. The researchers wrote in the study:
The replacement of natural materials by plastic could appear in response to a limitation in the availability of vegetation in the fields, which could be directly linked to the use of herbicides. On the other hand, the use of plastic as the only resource for the construction of the nest could be associated with the preference of this material over natural ones. Some evidence shows that the use of synthetic materials in nesting could bring adaptive advantages.
Who knows, perhaps plastic provides an adaptive advantage we are unaware of, the way some birds use cigarette butts to repel parasites.
