The importance of bees for pollinating wild plants and crops is well known. If we lose the bees, we lose our food. But this is only part of the picture. Bees also support a hidden network of other species, sometimes as mutual partners, sometimes as prey, sometimes as other unwilling victims.
Many organisms depend on bees for survival, and many of these interactions are not mutually supportive. Some predators focus on bees, for example bee wolves (Philanthus triangulum), capture bees to feed their young in their underground nests.
Crab spiders, also known as the white death spider, are often found camouflaged on the top of flowers. They wait for bees to sip on some nectar and then the spider consumes the bee, and afterwards vomits the corpse back up.
