Summer 2022: Our ProjectsBees for Peace is a part of The University of Toronto Research Opportunity Program (ROP) this summer. The students from this program have been split up into groups and have been working on projects at various religious organizations.
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Aggie & Friends
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Hi there, my name is Agapostemon virescens, but my friends call me Aggie. I am Toronto's official bee. Yes, I am a bee, but contrary to what you might think, I don't produce honey. I'm a pollinator! We female bees pollinate: when we drink flower nectar, we get all dusty with pollen (which is something like flower sperm.) We then carry it to other flowers - and voila! Plant reproduction - and more fruits, vegetables and flowers for everyone! You can see us foraging on flowers in the warm summer. You'll also see our guys flying around the flowers, looking for mates. How to tell us apart? I've got white stripes, the males have yellow ones. We live underground in a shared housing unit, like a condominium, with other females and our young. We are real team players: while several of us are out looking for food, at least one of us guards our communal entrance from uninvited visitors.
Hi everyone! My name’s Coco and I’m a cuckoo bee or scientifically I’m Epeoloides pilosulus. I’m a type of bee that is considered a parasite as I have the gene kleptoparasitism, but I promise I’m nice! I love having time for myself so you will often see me flying around alone just being me. I love free time so I often leave my responsibilities with a bee sitter. I am not what you’d consider a typical bee as I don’t collect pollen nor do I build my own nests. I prefer to just go with the flow and stay wherever.
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Hi everyone! My name is Melly, but my real name is Apis mellifera. I'm the Western Honey Bee! I am not from Canada, I’m actually from Africa, Asia, and Europe! I am the common yellow and black striped bee that you will think of when you think of bees. I live with my enormous family in our home: the hive. We all work for the queen bee. I am a female bee, meaning I go out and collect honey for our hive. While I am outside gathering nectar and pollen. I am also pollinating flowers making me a pollinator. Oh, am I happy to not be a male bee. They are so lazy and do nothing but lounge around, mate, then die. We are very important to humans because we produce honey which causes humans to grow us in aviaries so the world will always have a supply of honey and beeswax. A fun fact about us is that we love to dance! We will do little dances called the “waggle dance” to communicate to other bees. So the next time you are outside and see a yellow and black bee, make sure to say hello because you might see me!
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Howdy! My full name is Xylocopa virginia, but everyone just calls me Xylo. I’m a carpenter who is also a solitary bee, meaning I don’t produce honey. When people see me, they usually mistake me for a bumblebee, but I am different in that I have a shiny bald patch on my abdomen. I can also be green or purple! As a female, I am the engineer of the nest. I build the nest so my babies have a home to live in when they grow up. This also means that I have a stinger to protect them from anyone that may try to harm them. You will rarely see me out in the fields, since I’m stuck at home all day, building the nest. The daddys, on the other hand, don’t have a stinger. They just help with protecting the area around the home and divebombing or headbutting anyone that gets too close. I like to cut and build with wood, which is why I’m called a carpenter bee! I usually make nests in softwoods like a dead log or cedarwood, so if you see me buzzing around wood, you’ll know that I am a carpenter bee, and not my cousin, Rusty the bumblebee. I make tunnels in the wood to create a place for my bee eggs, and I reuse these tunnels to prevent damaging the wood. While I make these tunnels, I reuse them as much as I can! The wood shavings from digging would be used for creating partitions for my eggs so that they are protected from predators. However, I would dispose of some wood shavings outside the nest if it is no longer useful.
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Hey everyone! I’m Rusty, a rusty-patch bumblebee. My scientific name is Bombus affinis. Although you may have seen some of my relatives, other species of bumblebees, flying around, the chances of you spotting me in Toronto is relatively low. Due to the changes in my habitat, I haven’t been spotted in the city in decades and am Canada’s first officially endangered bee. I used to live with about 50 to 500 other friends per group, but now we can’t call this place our home. Since we’re bigger and hairier than honeybees, we’re much better pollinators of native plants. In fact, we can force flowers to release pollen. A fun fact is that when we’re young, we’ll eat our own poop to strengthen our immune systems!
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Hey everyone, I’m a leaf cutter bee! More specifically, I’m Megachile latimanus, but you can just call me Meg. I’m a little different from other bees you might know. Instead of living in a hive, I live by myself in a nest that I make out of pieces of leaves I cut, that’s why they call me the leaf cutter bee! In a way, it’s like I live in my own little cabin made out of leaves. Most other bees carry the pollen they collect on their legs. But I’m not like the other bees, as I carry pollen on my abdomen. Since I’m native to Ontario, I’m a much better pollinator than non-native bees like honeybees. Some people say I can do the pollination of 20 honeybees! So if you see little cuts in the leaves of your garden, don’t fret. It’s just me and friends doing what we do best.
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We have worked closely with community members of Baha'i, Brahma Kumaris, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Sikhism, Sufism and spirituality more broadly, nature conservationists, climate activists, politicians and governmental workers from the local to the national level.
Here is a partial list of the religious communities and other organizations that we have worked with. Because all humans need bees, our network is open to our global family.
