The Birds and (wait for it) the Bees

One of our favorite places to visit in South Florida is a tiny park in the beach town of Lantana.  The Lantana Nature Preserve is a 6.5-acre piece of old Florida.  The Preserve is located between Lake Worth and the Atlantic Ocean and is a reconstructed Florida maritime hammock. The Preserve was constructed on the site of the old Lantana town dump.  The dump was cleaned up, fill was added to make an artificial dune and exotic plants were removed.  Red Mangroves (Rhizopora mangle) and Sea Grapes (Coccoloba uvifera} fringe the Preserve while Cabbage Palms (Sabal palmetto), Wild Coffee plants (Psychotria nervosa), Gumbo Limbo trees (Bursera simaruba) and a giant fig (Ficus sp) grow in the interior.  A quarter mile trail winds through the Preserve giving intimate views of the plant life, butterflies, birds and bees.

Giant Ficus in Lantana Nature Preserve

Male Red-bellied Woodpecker at nest in Cabbage Palm

During a visit in May, we found Red-bellied Woodpeckers (Melanerpes carolinus) with a nest in a live Cabbage Palm. In most of their range, Red-bellied Woodpeckers nest in dead trees or at least in dead branches. Where Cabbage Palms are available, these woodpeckers will make nests in the soft, fibrous trunks of the live palm.  Red-bellied Woodpeckers drill a round hole about two inches in diameter in the tree trunk, then burrow down about a foot to make the next cavity.   We watched the nest as the adult birds would regularly visit bringing food to the nearly fledged young peeking out of the hole. Red-bellied Woodpeckers usually lay about four eggs.  We could see two young woodpeckers peeking from the hole waiting to be fed.  Woodpeckers typically use a nest hole only once. 

Male Red-bellied Woodpecker bringing food to young woodpecker

Immature Red-bellied Woodpecker looking out of the nest

In September, we returned to the Preserve and found the nest again.  To our surprise, the nest no longer hosted woodpeckers but instead hosted Honey Bees (Apis mellifera).  After the woodpeckers left the nest, bees must have come from an already established hive whose population had grown too large. Large hives produce new queen bees that will fly off with about half the hive’s population of worker bees in a process called swarming.  The swarm will stay in a compact group and send out scouts to look for a new hive location.  When the scouts agree on a new nest site, they lead the swarm to it and the new hive is established.  The bees will then make hexagonal cells of wax to grow the next generation of bees.  The bees will fill other waxy cells with honey they made from nectar.  Honey is the food to fuel the members of the hive. 

Honey Bees using the old Red-bellied Woodpecker nest

This cabbage palm tree in Florida hosted two different species of vastly different size, behavior and ecological needs in the same year.  A scarce resource like a good nest tree can have many different users, even birds and bees.