Shown is Paula Sharp’s book, Native Bees of the Lower Rio Grande Valley, which published earlier this year. Sharp spent five years documenting more than 100 bee species in the Valley. (Dina Arévalo | [email protected])
The Rio Grande Valley is home to a diversity of flora and fauna not seen anywhere else in the country.
While most people may be familiar with the role that the Valley plays in the spring and fall migrations of birds or butterflies, there’s another type of animal with a variety of species that can only be found here — bees.
But since the 1800s, no one had taken a comprehensive look at the types of bees that buzz around the Valley. Recently, however, one woman sought to change that.
Paula Sharp — a fiction author, photographer, journalist and onetime public defender — spent five years exploring the Valley from Falcon Park, to South Padre Island and all places in between.
Since the start of her journey in 2018, she documented more than 100 species of bees here, including some species that had never been documented before.
And now, the fruits of her labor are available for anyone to explore themselves thanks to Sharp’s new book, “Native Bees of the Rio Grande Valley,” which was published this year by the Texas A&M University Press.
The hefty book contains more than 500 pages of highly detailed information, including physical descriptions and locations, for the myriad bees Sharp documented.
But the book’s best highlights are the hundreds of stunning photographs Sharp captured of the tiny insects.
From bumble bees to leafcutter bees, to bees that mimic wasps, to the more familiar honey and killer bees, Sharp’s masterpiece is awash with vibrant closeups that help illustrate her precise descriptions of the bees’ taxonomy, their behavior and physical characteristics, their favorite flowers and more.
There are photos of bees napping in squash flowers, bee butts poking out the top of tasty cactus blossoms, hairy bee legs laden with pollen, and numerous extreme closeups of bees with their colorful and multifaceted eyes staring straight into the camera.
At the end of the book, Sharp has included two extensive indexes that allow the reader to find the precise locations where specific bee species or plant species can be found.
Sharp’s journey began in 2018 with a trip to the National Butterfly Center in Mission.
She, along with fellow bee documentarian, Ross Eatman — to whom Sharp’s book is dedicated — came to the butterfly center in September 2018 to conduct a bee survey, according to Sharp and Eatman’s website, wildbeestexas.com.
Their, the pair encountered a red-legged leafcutter bee “unlike anything they had seen before,” the website states.
That bee piqued Sharp’s curiosity, prompting her to make return trips to numerous parts of the Valley over the next five years.
Sharp’s rigorous documentation of the Valley’s bees has even led to the discovery or reclassification of entirely new species, such as the Griswold’s carpenter bee.
The fuzzy little black bee, with wings that can flash with a “purple-to-magenta iridescence,” is described and shown in full color on page 197 of the book.
Other bees that are singular to the Valley include the Aztec sweat bee, a tiny insect whose carapace sports the most vibrant metallic blue-green coloring.
“A. azteca appears in all three border counties of the Valley from June through November,” Sharp writes of the Aztec sweat bee on page 297.
Sharp’s book on bees is as broad in detail as it is beautiful, and it sheds renewed light on the biodiversity that’s on display in the Valley’s proverbial backyard.