Searching for Bees in Hell Hole Canyon
I started visited Anza-Borrego Desert State Park with my husband around three years ago. Ever since that first visit, we feel a pull to return to the Park in late November and again around February or March.
I think about the sky in Anza-Borrego as a deliquescent expanse that offers a glimpse of infinity, especially at night. Beyond the atmosphere the celestial bodies shine, some are long gone but the light they emitted is only just arriving. Some are invisible to me because they are young; one day far into the future, their light will be seen by other eyes then mine. In Anza-Borrego, slow time reveals its power across the landscape: the magnanimous engravings of ancient volcanos and seas long since receded; the rivers that changed course, the catastrophic floods and landslides.
Once on the trail I will set aside for the moment the time and space warping effect that comes with looking at metamorphic rocks, at the layers upon layers of sediments bent by heat and pressure and at the monolithic tumble of boulders down a slope to pursue my favorite activity: searching for native bees.
Native bees? If that term is not familiar, I will explain. I am fond of Apis mellifera; of the almonds and other crops it pollinates and of the honey it makes. But the honey bee is not a native bee; it evolved in collaboration with the flora and fauna that are native to the Eurasian continent. The honey bee crossed the Atlantic on ships. It arrived on the eastern shores of the North American continent in 1622 with early European settlers.
The date is February 17, 2026. I am hiking Hell Hole Canyon to my customary turnaround point. Going further would involve lots of rock scrambling. The trail continues to Maidenhair Falls, but I turn around after spending some time under one of several palm groves. If I were younger, I might be tempted to scramble. The forecast predicts lots of wind; the strength of the gusts will increase as I hike.
Bees tend to avoid flying around in the wind, so it seems unlikely that I will find any today. I will try anyway, because tomorrow we will leave the desert and return home. I start my hike, taking in with wonder a landscape designed by something that is not self-aware (by human standards) by an incomprehensibly complex yet decentralized power that is always more than because it encompasses everything but has no lasting form, as it is always shifting. Here is mutualism as the far as I can see and beyond, at magnitude. This will of coordination among and between so many organisms, elements, atoms, defies all human concepts of hegemony. Here before my eyes lie an infinite number of connections among living and non-living things in constant motion and flux. That is my best but imperfect attempt to describe nature.
The first bee I find is clinging to a pincushion flower. I cannot believe my luck in find this probably male bee. Male native bees, once they reach adulthood and emerge from their brood nest, do not have a specific shelter to which they may return. Females establish new nests, in burrows that have been abandoned or that they dig themselves, in tufts of grass, or cavities in wood, or in the hollow stems of plants. Male native bees shelter where they can as this bee on the pincushion flower has. They often dig deep into a flower head first and hold onto flower parts such as the stamen with their mandibles. The bee I have found is in the genus Hesperapis; it is part of the Melittidae family of bees. I kneel close to the bee and a video that I will review later clip some screenshots. I hold the upper stem of the flower to keep it from moving so much in the wind. My hand behind the flower and the clinging bee also provides some contrast, helping the camera to focus. I leave the bee as I found it and move on.
The Melittidae family has a lineage dating back to the earliest bees. Bees gradually evolved from wasps. After the evolutionary divergence of bees from wasps, the melittids were the earliest group to branch off from bees. The ancient predecessors of the melittids possibly emerged around 120 million years ago (mya). The oldest melittid bee fossil, found in Oise, France, is a female bee embedded in amber from the early Eocene epoch. The Eocene lasted from 56 – 33.9 mya. This melittid fossil, a species named Palaeomacropis eocenicus gen. nov. sp. nov., is perhaps 55 million years old, give or take a few million.
The melittid fossil at Oise was embedded with ancient company: one fly, pollen grains and 14 ants. When one is a bee seeker, observing a diverse combination of insects and food together in one place is a common event. I often see bees, flower flies and ants all foraging near each other on flowers.
I found two more bees on my hike that day. One was a Hesperapis and second was in the genus Dufourea, a member of the Short-faced Bees. Both were sheltering in Desert Dandelion flowers.
The native bees in Anza-Borrego have evolved over thousands of years with the native plants, shrubs and trees that grow and bloom there over thousands of years. Bees that are generalists can visit a wide range of flower types, from cacti to the Desert Sunflower to phacelia, although morphological features such as tongue length limit the generalist bee’s range. For example, a short-tongued may have some difficulty with a penstemon flower, although if the bee is very small, it could just walk in to the flower to access the pollen and nectar inside.
A specialist bee must time its emergence as an adult with the blooming period of a specific genus of flower to be successful in passing on its genes. The Hesperapis genus includes some pollinator specialists. A genus or species of flower that a Hesperapis specialist requires may or may not share the bee’s high level of specialization and dependency. Some floral genera may rely exclusively upon Hesperapis visitors; others may be facultative, which means that they can be pollinated by other bee genera in addition to Hesperapis.
Anza-Borrego is a story of deep time. We can see it almost everywhere when we look at its ancient features and inhabitants; when we stop to look at the several mountain ranges, or hike through a canyon, or wonder how old a Creosote Bush clone might be. I am reminded each time I see a Hesperapis in the desert of the melittids, the earliest branching of a bee family (the Melittidae) from the ancient bees. I think about the Hesperapis found in amber that lived perhaps 55 million years ago. They are animals that have been around so much longer than our earliest bipedal relatives. The hominid ancestors of the genus Homo, the australopiths, did not emerge until the Pliocene epoch, some 4 to 2 million years ago. But in the end, we are all progeny of the stars.
- Michez, Denis; Nel, Andre; Menier, Jean-Jacques; Rasmont, Pierre (2007). “The oldest fossil of a melittid bee (Hymenoptera: Apiformes) from the early Eocene of Oise (France)” Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society. 150 (4): 701–709. Archived (PDF) from the original on 23 September 2015. PDF accessed on April 4, 2026.
- Hawks, John (2023). “Guide to Australopithecus species” johnhawks.net. https://www.johnhawks.net/p/guide-to-australopithecus-species. Page accessed on April 4, 2026.
