Sex, Drugs & Rock & Roll:
The Life & Death of Mungurrgurra
(Dawson's Burrowing Bees).
PHOTO ESSAY
AUSTRALIA. 2024.
On the baked earth of mid-north west Australia there is a high drama among the locals - local bees that is. As one resident of the area said to me, it is all sex drugs and rock & roll down on the clay pan.
Welcome to the world of the Dawson's Burrowing Bee (Amegilla dawsoni), or Mungurrgurra, Australia's third largest bee and possibly its most violent. Confined to Western Australia, this big furry bee lives and dies in a month-long whorl of pheromones, fury and foraging!
These are solitary nesting bees (making burrows in dry hard ground), but they aggregate in common areas, and up to 10,000 individuals may nest at the same site. In the image below, by the end of the season, you can see hundreds of individual burrows pockmarking a road.
Thousands of burrows dot what is actually a road. Even though the local shire has put up "road closed" signs some inconsiderate people drive around them and over the bees anyway - as you can see from the tyre tracks.
Close up of the burrows in a clay pan.
Adults emerge during the months of July to September when their forage plants, poverty bush (Eremophila spp.) and Rough Bluebell (Trichodesma zeylanicum), are flowering. For the rest of the year the species exists as dormant larvae in underground brood cells.
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The cycles begins when the males (brown and smaller than the females) emerge several days earlier than the females (white), and begin to patrol the nesting ground looking for emerging females. Virgin females emit a special pheromone, and when the males detect it in a burrow, they will wait (somewhat impatiently) for the female to emerge.
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Several male bees wait arond a burrow entrance of a virgin female. The one in the middle actually goes down into the burrow in order to encourage the female to come out.
A male (brown) bee waits at the entrance to the hole, waiting for the 'virgin' female (out of focus white bee in the hole) to emerge so he can be the first to 'mate' with her. The females, understandbly, are very reluctant to leave the safety of the burrow.
The females are often reluctant to come out, especially when there are several males around the entrance. And with good reason, for once she emerges, she will likely be pounced on by every male bee in the vicinity, all desperate to be the one to mate with her. What ensues is a furious 'mating ball' around the poor female with as many as a dozen male bees all trying to get hold of her and tear away opponents.
Fights also erupt between males at the burrow entrance even before the females emerge as they all compete for prime poition.
Males bees surround the female (white) bee as she ermerges from the burrow.
This frenzy can last up to ten minutes and sometimes ends with the female being decaptitated in the process.
A male bee tries to mate with the body of a decapitated female
The decaptiated head of a bee lies in the field of burrows, 'gazing' skyward. Scenes of death and dismemberment are common place.
Eventually a male will emerge from the pack victorious as he 'rides' the female away from the scrum and to the safety of surrounding vegetation where the pair stay until 'mating' is complete (around 2-5 minutes).
A victorious male 'rides' away from the field of burrows on top of the bigger female .
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Once she has been mated, the female bee will be left alone by the males (essentially, she stops producing the pheromones - 'drug' - that drives the male behaviour). She can then busy herself preparing her burrow in peace.
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At the bottom of the burrow (around 15-30 cm), she constructs an urn-shaped brood cell and waterproofs its walls with secreted wax.
She then forages for food and half-fills the cell with nectar and pollen (the pollen settling to the bottom). ​An egg is laid on the surface of the nectar, then she caps the cell and commences to construct another slightly deeper. She may repeat this process up to seven times! When she is done, she seals the burrow with a mud plug and demolishes the turret (and dies shortly thereafter).
A female bee building a 'turret' around her burrow entrance.
Female bees foraging on Rough Bluebell (Trichodesma zeylanicum). The emergence of the bees is timed to coincide with the flowering of these 'food plants'.
While some females shelter in their burrows overnight, others roost on vegetation along with the males, gripping leaf tips or stems in their jaws and folding their legs beneath their bodies.
A female (white) bee peers out from her burrow which has been dug into the baked clay of outback Western Australia.
A male bee roosts on vegetation for the night, gripping leaf tips or stems in their jaws and folding their legs beneath their bodies (image turned on its side for viewing). Male bee is facing down towards the ground.
Life on the clay pan is brutal. Even if the bees survive the frenzy of the mating balls, they may then become prey to other animals like birds. In this case, a flock of little crows was wandering through the field plucking bees from their burrows or as they were mating. The number of little crows at this site was unnaturally high due to the proximity to a town where they thrive on human rubbish - one of the ways in which humans are (indirectly) impacting these populations.
This is a young little crow with a male bee.
An adult little crow holds up a male bee by his leg.
Once they have mated, the male bees die and the scavengers quickly move in.
Ants are the ultimate 'clean up crews'. Here they set about dismantling a dead male.
An ant carries off part of the bee to the nearby colony. It's busy work.
In addition to scavengers and predators, the bees must also endure unseasonal rain which can drown emerging bees in their burrows.
After a heavy rainshower I returned to the nesting ground to find several bees drowned in their burrows. This one likely was close to emerging but could not get out in time and drowned.
After one rain shower, I came out to find this shimmering green insect munching on a dead bee.
Towards the end of the season, there will be a sea of white females with few brown males left. At this time, fights frequently erupt between females over resources.
In this case, a female tried to enter another females burrow - it is speculated they do this to save the energy of having to dig their own (and there are often empty burrows around anyway). Needless to say, the resident bee was having none of it.
A female bee roosts on vegetation for the night, gripping leaf tips or stems in their jaws and folding their legs beneath their bodies
The bee eggs hatch within a few days underground and the tiny larvae commence swallowing the liquid food left by 'mum', until they become bloated white grubs nearly filling the cells. These white grubs then curl up and remain motionless and unresponsive until the following year, whereupon they will turn into a pupa from which an adult bee emerges. The young adults have to gnaw their way through the cell cap and burrow to the surface and thus, the cycle begins again.
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​The Mungurragurra grubs are a source if sweet food for Aboriginal people of the Gascoyne region of Western Australia (the Yingarrda people), who regard them as a 'delicacy'. They dig them up and cook the grubs inside their mud capsules in an open fire. ​​
A male bee tries to mate with a white female who has not even been able to get out of her burrow yet.
A male bee on a Swan River Daisy type flower.
Bees love to build burrows on outback roads, so if you are driving off road in the Gascoyne or Murchison region of WA during July or September, please keep an eye out for the bees and avoid driving over them. If you come across a nesting ground on a road near a town, notify the local shire immeditately so that they can take measures to temporarily protect the site.
I hope you enjoyed this journey into the scurrilous world of our amazing Mungurrgurra. It is truly one of Australia's greatest nature spectacles!
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If you would like to know more, check out the links and contacts below.
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Links:
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(narrated by David Attenborough)
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WA Museum: Dawson's Burrowing Bees
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​Contacts:
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Scientific
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Dr Terry Houston
Author of A Guide to Native Bees of Australia
Research Associate, Dept. of Terrestrial Zoology (Entomology)
Western Australian Museum
Telephone: direct (08) 9212 3742
Email: Terry.Houston@museum.wa.gov.au
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Aboriginal/Cultural
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Antoinette Roe
C/o Gwoonwardu Mia,
Gascoyne Aboriginal Heritage and Cultural Centre
21 Robinson St, Carnarvon
Telephone: (08) 9941 1146
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​Gascoyne Region
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Shire of Carnarvon
Telephone: (08) 9941 0000
Email: shire@carnarvon.wa.gov.au
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Gascoyne Regional Development Commission​​​
Telephone: (08) 08 9941 7000
Email: info@gdc.wa.gov.au
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