Megachilid bee feeding from a Mexican sunflower (Tithonia tubaeformis)
The Megachilidae are a cosmopolitan family of (mostly) solitary bees whose pollen-carrying structure (called a scopa) is restricted to the ventral surface of the abdomen (rather than mostly or exclusively on the hind legs as in other bee families). Megachilid genera are most commonly known as mason bees and leafcutter bees, reflecting the materials they build their nest cells from (soil or leaves, respectively); a few collect plant or animal hairs and fibers, and are called carder bees. All species feed on nectar and pollen, but a few are cleptoparasites (informally called "cuckoo bees"), feeding on pollen collected by other megachilid bees. Parasitic species do not possess scopae. The brightly colored scopa leads to a colloquial name used occasionally in North America - "jelly-belly bees". Megachilid bees are among the world's most efficient pollinators because of their energetic swimming-like motion in the reproductive structures of flowers, which moves pollen, as needed for pollination. One of the reasons they are efficient pollinators is their frequency of visits to plants, but this is because they are extremely inefficient at gathering pollen; compared to all other bee families, megachilids require on average nearly 10 times as many trips to flowers to gather sufficient resources to provision a single brood cell.
Size: 4287px × 2848px
Location: Estado de Mexico, Mexico
Photo credit: © Guillermo Lopez Barrera / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: bee, insect, leafcutter, mason, megachilid, megachilidae, pollen, pollination, pollinator, tithonia, tubaeformis, tubiformis
