Roger the Great

Our story begins in the year 1965 in a mythical land known as the Treasure Valley. It was a magical time when bees ranged free, and could be found wherever there was a hole deep enough to build a nest. Watts family patriarch Roger Watts, like his neighbors, hung a board over the door riddled with holes precisely sized to the leafcutter bee’s diameter. It was a paschal offering to his apian friends, encouraging them to lodge there instead of burrowing into the house’s structural timbers. Every fall, while the bees slumbered in their nests, a man from the big city would drive through the Valley and buy up these bee boards from Roger’s neighbors and whisk them away to distant lands where their proclivity for pollen was in high demand. Sensing opportunity, Roger struck out in search of enlightenment—answers to the great mysteries of pollination—and to establish contact with those who so depended on the bees’ handiwork.

As he soon discovered, the leafcutter bee (Megachile rotundata) was highly prized for it’s affinity for the alfalfa flower. Alfalfa—while essential for animal feed and one of the most valuable out of all our nation’s crops—is a cantankerous sort. It won’t let just any bee visit its flower, swatting away intruders with its whip-like stamen. The Leafcutter bee relishes the challenge, absorbing the blows with its armored helm, and pushing on for the sweet nectar at the flower’s heart. As one of few bees willing to brave these perils, the leafcutter’s services were in high demand.

Roger began shepherding these bees, amassing legions that he dealt out to alfalfa seed growers in their time of need. It was a lucrative endeavor, and worked out well for the farmers and their precious bees as well. But the idyllic tranquility would not last forever; disaster lay just around the corner.

When the attack came, it was swift and merciless. Chalkbrood, an insidious fungus and the ancient enemy of the leafcutter, had lay dormant for generations, plotting its rise, so when it finally unveiled it's master plan, there was no defense. The fungus swept across colony after colony, decimating leafcutter bee populations, and leaving only carnage in its wake. With his dominion in ruins and the fate of the entire alfalfa industry in the balance, Roger again set off in search of answers. How could he possibly defeat the chalkbrood and save his bees?

The next season, Roger took his remaining bees and led a mass exodus from their ancestral homes. He forced all of the bees to migrate to new nests, abandoning their old wood blocks to the chalkbrood, who quickly declared victory. But it would prove to be a Pyrrhic victory. Roger rounded up these infested nests—now empty of leafcutters—and unleashed on them a cleansing fire, killing everything within them, and snatching victory from the jaws of defeat. He who laughs last, laughs best.

With his bees in the clear, Roger was now able to resettle them into new homes, and regain a semblance of normalcy. But others were not so lucky. Nearly all of Roger’s competitors had succumbed to the evil chalkbrood, leaving Watts Bees as the undisputed king of leafcutter bees. In the years that followed, Roger and his descendants would expand their empire, adding blue orchard bees (Osmia lignaria, a species of mason bee) to the fold, and reinforcing their position as the largest supplier of solitary bees in the United States.

(Inspired by a true story.)