Bees

BumblebeesBombusLarge, furry, loud, and cold-tolerant in a way no honey bee is. Bumblebees run annual colonies: a mated queen emerges alone in spring, founds a nest by herself, raises workers through the summer, produces new queens and males in late season, and then the entire colony dies except those new queens.Eusocial, colony dies each autumnKeeps only a few days of stores

Mason beesOsmiaSolitary spring bees that build their nests out of mud, and the best orchard pollinators most gardeners have never noticed. A female mason bee works entirely alone: she finds a hollow tube, provisions a cell with pollen, lays an egg, walls it off with mud, and repeats until the tube is full.SolitaryProduces no honey

Leafcutter beesMegachileThe bees responsible for the neat semicircular notches cut from rose and lilac leaves every summer. A female leafcutter bee cuts oval pieces of leaf with her mandibles, carries each one back curled beneath her body, and uses them to line and seal a nest cell — the cells end up looking like small green cigars.SolitaryProduces no honey

Mining beesAndrenaSolitary ground-nesting bees, and the small volcano-shaped mounds of fine soil that appear on lawns and bare paths in April are theirs. Mining bees are the classic spring solitary bees of the northern hemisphere: short-lived, entirely harmless, often nesting in dense aggregations that look like a colony but are not, and a great many of them are specialists that visit only one kind of flower..SolitaryProduces no honey

Carpenter beesXylocopaThe largest bees most people ever see, and among the loudest. Carpenter bees excavate their own tunnels in dead wood using their mandibles — a remarkable feat for an insect — and the biggest species are the size of the top joint of a thumb.SolitaryProduces no honey

Stingless beesMeliponiniThe other honey-making bees, and the only serious rival to Apis for that title. Stingless bees are tropical, perennial and genuinely eusocial, and they store honey in clusters of egg-shaped wax-and-resin pots rather than in hexagonal comb.Eusocial, colony survives the winterStores a harvestable surplus

Sweat beesHalictidaeThe bees that land on your arm in hot weather, and the group that breaks the tidy division between solitary and social bees more thoroughly than anything else in the order. Some sweat bees are strictly solitary, some form small colonies with a queen and workers, and a number switch between the two depending on latitude, altitude and season — the same species living socially in a warm valley and solitarily on the hill above it.Primitively eusocialProduces no honey

Cuckoo beesNomada, Sphecodes, Coelioxys and allied generaBees that build no nest, gather no pollen and feed no young of their own. A cuckoo bee female finds another bee's provisioned cell, slips in, and lays her egg on somebody else's pollen store; her larva then kills the host's egg or larva and eats the food it was left.Cleptoparasitic — lays in other bees' nestsProduces no honey

Ivy beeColletes hederaeA bee that was not recognised as a species until 1993, was unknown in Britain until 2001, and is now one of the commonest autumn bees across southern England. The ivy bee emerges in September, forages almost exclusively on ivy flowers, nests in enormous ground aggregations, and is gone by November.SolitaryProduces no honey

Wool carder beeAnthidium manicatumThe bee that shaves plants to line its nest, and the only common bee in which the male is substantially larger than the female. Male wool carder bees hold territories over patches of flowers and attack anything that enters — including honey bees and bumblebees, which they ram, grapple and occasionally kill using spines on the end of the abdomen.SolitaryProduces no honey

Yellow-faced beesHylaeusThe bees that look least like bees. Yellow-faced bees are small, black, effectively hairless and marked with pale yellow or white on the face, and almost everyone who sees one assumes it is a small wasp.SolitaryProduces no honey

Squash beesEucera subgenus Peponapis and XenoglossaBees that fly before dawn to reach flowers that close by mid-morning, and that feed their young on the pollen of one plant family and no other. Squash bees are specialists on Cucurbita — pumpkin, squash, courgette and the wild gourds those crops came from — and they spread across North America with the crop as Indigenous farmers carried it north from Mexico.SolitaryProduces no honey

Long-horned beesEucera and MelissodesSolitary summer bees whose males carry antennae longer than their own bodies, and the group a bee orchid is pretending to be. Several Ophrys orchids produce flowers that mimic the shape, hair and scent of a female Eucera closely enough that males attempt to mate with them, picking up pollen in the process — one of the most extraordinary pollination systems in botany, and one that only works because these particular bees exist..SolitaryProduces no honey

Red mason beeOsmia bicornisThe bee in your bee hotel. Osmia bicornis is the commonest cavity-nesting solitary bee in northwest Europe, the one most gardeners actually manage to attract, and one of the most effective fruit pollinators known — a few hundred females will pollinate an orchard acre as thoroughly as a honey bee colony of tens of thousands.SolitaryProduces no honey

Tawny mining beeAndrena fulvaThe bright orange bee that appears on lawns in April and produces small volcano-shaped mounds of soil, prompting a great many alarmed enquiries about infestations. It is a solitary bee, it is entirely harmless, the mounds disappear within weeks, and it is one of the most conspicuous and most misidentified insects of the British spring..SolitaryProduces no honey

Buff-tailed bumblebeeBombus terrestrisThe commonest bumblebee in Europe, the one reared commercially by the million for tomato pollination, and — as a consequence of that trade — an invasive species on several continents. It is also the bee behind the winter bumblebees now active through December and January in mild British cities, which is a genuine and recent behavioural change..Eusocial, colony dies each autumnKeeps only a few days of stores

Tree bumblebeeBombus hypnorumA bumblebee that was entirely absent from Britain until 2001 and is now one of the commonest in gardens across England and Wales — one of the best-documented range expansions of any insect. It is also the bumblebee most likely to nest in a bird box, and the one responsible for the clouds of males hovering outside them in early summer, which alarms people considerably more than it should..Eusocial, colony dies each autumnKeeps only a few days of stores

Digger beesAnthophoraFast, furry, bumblebee-like solitary bees that hover in front of a flower before darting into it, and among the earliest substantial bees of the spring. The hairy-footed flower bee is the one most British gardeners meet — the females black and the males gingery, so different that they were long thought to be separate species — and it is a specialist of deep tubular flowers that honey bees cannot use..SolitaryProduces no honey

Plasterer beesColletesSolitary ground-nesting bees that line their cells with a self-produced plastic. A female Colletes paints the walls of each cell with a secretion applied by her short forked tongue, which polymerises into a transparent, waterproof, cellophane-like membrane — a genuine biological polyester, and one of the most remarkable materials any insect makes.SolitaryProduces no honey

Small carpenter beesCeratinaTiny, shiny, metallic dark-green or blue-black bees that excavate nests in the soft pith of broken stems — bramble, raspberry, elder, sumac — and then, unusually for a solitary bee, stay with their offspring. A Ceratina mother guards her nest through development and in some species is still alive when her young emerge, which puts the genus at one of the evolutionary staging posts between solitary living and true sociality..SolitaryProduces no honey

Alfalfa leafcutter beeMegachile rotundataThe most intensively managed solitary bee in the world, and the animal that makes alfalfa seed production possible. Honey bees learn to rob alfalfa flowers from the side to avoid being struck on the head by the tripping mechanism, which means they gather nectar and pollinate nothing.SolitaryProduces no honey

Alkali beeNomia melanderiA ground-nesting American bee managed at a scale nothing else matches: growers in the Walla Walla valley of Washington State build and irrigate artificial salt-crusted nesting beds covering hectares, in which millions of females nest, and then farm alfalfa seed around them. It is the only significant case anywhere of a wild ground-nesting bee being managed by engineering its habitat rather than by housing it..SolitaryProduces no honey

Orchid beesEuglossiniBrilliant metallic green, gold and blue bees of the neotropical forest, and the only bees that collect perfume. Male orchid bees gather volatile aromatic compounds from orchids, fungi and rotting wood, store them in hollow chambers in their swollen hind legs, and use the resulting blend in courtship — a behaviour with no parallel anywhere else in the animal kingdom, and one that hundreds of orchid species have evolved to exploit..SolitaryProduces no honey

Wallace's giant beeMegachile plutoThe largest bee in the world — a female has a wingspan of around six centimetres and jaws like a stag beetle — and one of the rarest. It nests inside occupied termite mounds in the Indonesian Moluccas, lining a chamber with resin to keep the termites out.SolitaryProduces no honey

Garden bumblebeeBombus hortorumThe longest-tongued common bumblebee in Europe, and the one that can feed legitimately from flowers every other bee has to rob. A garden bumblebee's tongue can exceed 15 mm — nearly three times a honey bee's — and it flies with it extended in front like a lance.Eusocial, colony dies each autumnKeeps only a few days of stores

Common carder beeBombus pascuorumThe ginger bumblebee that is still flying in November when everything else has finished, and one of the few common bumblebees that has held its ground while others declined. It is a moderately long-tongued species, it nests on the surface rather than underground, and it combs moss and dry grass over the nest — the carding behaviour its name records..Eusocial, colony dies each autumnKeeps only a few days of stores

Red-tailed bumblebeeBombus lapidariusA striking black bumblebee with a bright orange-red tail, and one of the most recognisable insects in a European summer. The queens are large, entirely velvet-black except for the tail, and the males are quite different animals to look at — smaller, with bright yellow facial hair and yellow bands that lead people to report two species where there is one..Eusocial, colony dies each autumnKeeps only a few days of stores

Early bumblebeeBombus pratorumThe smallest and quickest of the common bumblebees, and the one that gets its whole year over with early. Early bumblebee colonies emerge in March, reach reproduction by June and are finished by midsummer — which means the species is often producing new queens while other bumblebees are still building.Eusocial, colony dies each autumnKeeps only a few days of stores

Great yellow bumblebeeBombus distinguendusA large, uniformly straw-yellow bumblebee that was once found across most of Britain and is now confined to the far north and west — the Hebrides, Orkney, the north Scottish coast and a handful of Irish sites. Its decline is one of the best-documented in any British insect, and the cause is unusually clear: it is a long-tongued specialist of flower-rich hay meadow, and Britain lost almost all of that..Eusocial, colony dies each autumnKeeps only a few days of stores

Cuckoo bumblebeesBombus subgenus PsithyrusBumblebees that have given up building nests, gathering pollen and producing workers. A cuckoo bumblebee queen invades a host colony, kills or subdues the resident queen, and forces the host's own workers to raise her offspring.Cleptoparasitic — lays in other bees' nestsProduces no honey

Blue orchard beeOsmia lignariaNorth America's managed mason bee, and the species increasingly deployed alongside honey bees in Californian almond orchards because it does something honey bees cannot: fly in the cold wet weather that February almond bloom routinely brings. A few hundred females will pollinate an orchard acre as effectively as a full honey bee colony, and they are sold as cocoons in a box..SolitaryProduces no honey

Ashy mining beeAndrena cinerariaOne of the most strikingly marked solitary bees in Europe, and one of the easiest to recognise: a black bee with two clean bands of ash-grey hair across the thorax and a distinctly blue-black shine to the abdomen. It nests in lawns, banks and short turf in loose aggregations, and it is entirely harmless to anyone standing over it..SolitaryProduces no honey

Hairy-footed flower beeAnthophora plumipesA fast, furry, hovering bee that appears in gardens in early March and is regularly reported as two different species, because the sexes look nothing alike: the females are entirely black with orange pollen brushes, the males gingery-brown with long feathery hairs on their middle legs. It is one of the earliest substantial bees of the year and a specialist of the deep spring flowers honey bees cannot reach..SolitaryProduces no honey

Sharp-tailed beesCoelioxysCuckoo bees that specialise in leafcutters, and the females of which carry a striking piece of equipment: a sharply pointed, blade-like abdomen tip used to slit open a host's sealed leaf cell and insert an egg. The larva that hatches has enlarged jaws for killing the host's own larva, then moults into an ordinary-looking grub and eats the pollen loaf somebody else collected..Cleptoparasitic — lays in other bees' nestsProduces no honey

Mayan stingless beeMelipona beecheiiThe bee the Maya kept for two thousand years before anyone brought a honey bee to the Americas, and one whose management came embedded in a religious and calendrical framework rather than an agricultural one. Xunan kab — the royal lady — is a stingless bee kept in hollow log hives sealed at both ends, and its honey is thin, tart and used as medicine as much as food.Eusocial, colony survives the winterStores small quantities, occasionally harvested

Australian stingless beeTetragonula carbonariaAustralia's social native bee, kept in boxes by a growing number of hobbyists and used commercially to pollinate macadamia. It builds a brood comb in a rising spiral — a genuinely beautiful structure unlike anything else in the bee world — stores honey in separate resin pots, and produces a tart, medicinal honey that Aboriginal Australians have harvested as sugarbag for many thousands of years..Eusocial, colony survives the winterStores small quantities, occasionally harvested

Oil-collecting beesMacropisBees that collect floral oil instead of nectar, and one of the few groups that overturn the usual description of what a bee does. Macropis females gather fatty oil from specialised glands on yellow loosestrife flowers, mix it with pollen to provision their cells, and use it again to waterproof the nest — which lets them nest in damp ground where other bees cannot.SolitaryProduces no honey

Fairy beesPerditaThe smallest bees on earth, and among the most specialised. Perdita minima is under two millimetres long — smaller than a grain of rice, small enough that its shadow is easier to see than the bee — and the genus as a whole is a radiation of tiny desert specialists, most of which provision their cells with pollen from a single plant genus and fly for only a few weeks a year..SolitaryProduces no honey

Vulture beesTrigona hypogea and allied speciesThe only bees in the world that eat meat. Three Neotropical stingless bee species have given up pollen altogether and provision their nests with carrion instead, landing on dead animals, cutting flesh with specialised teeth, and carrying it home to be processed into a protein store.Eusocial, colony survives the winterStores small quantities, occasionally harvested

White-tailed bumblebeeBombus lucorumOne of the commonest bumblebees in northern Europe, and one that has quietly become three. Genetic work has split Bombus lucorum into a complex of at least three species — lucorum, cryptarum and magnus — that cannot reliably be separated in the field.Eusocial, colony dies each autumnKeeps only a few days of stores

Shrill carder beeBombus sylvarumOne of Britain's rarest bumblebees, reduced to a handful of scattered populations in south Wales, the Thames estuary, Salisbury Plain and Somerset. It is named for its high-pitched buzz, which is genuinely distinctive, and it is a late-emerging long-tongued specialist of exactly the flower-rich grassland Britain has almost entirely lost..Eusocial, colony dies each autumnKeeps only a few days of stores

Short-haired bumblebeeBombus subterraneusThe bumblebee Britain lost and tried to get back. Declared extinct in the UK in 2000, it became the subject of a reintroduction programme using stock from New Zealand — where it had been shipped in the 1880s to pollinate red clover and had survived — and then from Sweden.Eusocial, colony dies each autumnKeeps only a few days of stores

Rusty patched bumblebeeBombus affinisThe first bumblebee listed as endangered under the United States Endangered Species Act, in 2017. It was common across the eastern and midwestern United States within living memory and has declined by something close to 90% in range since the late 1990s — a collapse fast enough and complete enough that pathogen spillover from commercially reared bumblebees is among the leading explanations..Eusocial, colony dies each autumnKeeps only a few days of stores

Giant Patagonian bumblebeeBombus dahlbomiiThe largest bumblebee in the world — queens exceed 40 mm — and one of the clearest documented cases of a managed bee destroying a native one. Endemic to the temperate forests of southern Chile and Argentina, it was abundant within living memory and has collapsed across most of its range since commercial European bumblebees were imported for glasshouse tomato pollination in the 1980s and 1990s..Eusocial, colony dies each autumnKeeps only a few days of stores

Yellow-legged mining beeAndrena flavipesOne of the few European mining bees with two generations a year, which makes it visible from March right through to September while most of its relatives have a few weeks and disappear. It nests in dense aggregations that can run to many thousands of burrows in a single south-facing bank, and it is among the commonest and most watchable solitary bees in southern Britain..SolitaryProduces no honey

Large scabious mining beeAndrena hattorfianaA large, scarce mining bee that provisions its cells with the pollen of field scabious and its close relatives, and nothing else. It is one of the clearest examples in northern Europe of an obligate specialist: where the plant goes, the bee goes, and its decline tracks the loss of unimproved chalk grassland almost exactly..SolitaryProduces no honey

Two-coloured mason beeOsmia bicolorA mason bee that nests inside empty snail shells and then camouflages them, dragging grass stems and pine needles across the ground to build a small thatched pile over the top. It is one of the most extraordinary nesting behaviours of any bee, and it is entirely visible to anyone willing to sit on a chalk bank in April and watch..SolitaryProduces no honey

Giant resin beeMegachile sculpturalisA very large east Asian megachild that has established across North America and Europe within two decades, and one of the few solitary bees anywhere to become a genuine invasion concern. It nests in existing cavities, seals them with resin, and has been recorded forcibly evicting native carpenter bees from their tunnels — which is unusual behaviour and the main reason it is watched..SolitaryProduces no honey

Violet carpenter beeXylocopa violaceaOne of Europe's largest and most spectacular bees — a jet-black insect the size of a small bird with wings that flash iridescent violet in sunlight. It excavates nest tunnels in dead wood, and it has expanded northwards across Europe over recent decades, reaching southern England where it was formerly a rarity..SolitaryProduces no honey

Pantaloon beeDasypoda hirtipesA mining bee with the most extravagant pollen brushes of any European species — enormous golden hair fans on the hind legs that look like a pair of feathered trousers and give the bee its name. It is a sandy-soil specialist working composites, and a female returning to her burrow loaded with pollen is one of the more comic sights in British entomology..SolitaryProduces no honey

Sea aster beeColletes halophilusA plasterer bee restricted almost entirely to saltmarsh and coastal grazing marsh in southeast England and adjacent Europe, provisioning its cells with the pollen of sea aster and flying only in the few weeks that plant is in flower. It is a globally scarce species with a substantial share of its world population in the Thames and Essex estuaries..SolitaryProduces no honey

Bryony beeAndrena floreaA mining bee that provisions its cells exclusively with the pollen of white bryony, a hedgerow climber that most people know only as a weed. It is a strict specialist on a single plant species, it has expanded its British range substantially over recent decades, and it exists as a network of small populations wherever that one climber grows..SolitaryProduces no honey

Blood beesSphecodesSmall, near-hairless, wasp-like cleptoparasites with a striking blood-red abdomen against a black head and thorax. They parasitise sweat bees and mining bees, and unlike most cuckoo bees they frequently enter a host nest and kill the host's egg or larva directly rather than leaving the work to their own offspring..Cleptoparasitic — lays in other bees' nestsProduces no honey

Heath bumblebeeBombus jonellusA small, neat, short-faced bumblebee of heathland, moorland and coastal dune, and one of the few British species that regularly produces two generations in a season. It looks like a miniature garden bumblebee and is separated from it by the face: short and round rather than long..Eusocial, colony dies each autumnKeeps only a few days of stores

Moss carder beeBombus muscorumA pale gingery carder bee of coastal grassland, machair and marsh, and one of Britain's declining species. It is a long-tongued legume specialist that nests at the surface, cards moss and grass over the nest, and depends on exactly the flower-rich unimproved grassland that has largely gone..Eusocial, colony dies each autumnKeeps only a few days of stores

Bilberry bumblebeeBombus monticolaAn upland bumblebee with an unusually extensive orange-red tail covering more than half the abdomen, tied closely to bilberry on moorland and mountain. It is one of the clearest British examples of a species retreating uphill, and its lowland populations have largely gone..Eusocial, colony dies each autumnKeeps only a few days of stores

Blue mason beeOsmia caerulescensA small mason bee with a striking sexual difference — the females are metallic blue-black and the males bright golden-brown, so unalike that they are routinely recorded as two species. It nests in small cavities and seals cells with chewed leaf paste rather than mud, which sets it apart from its relatives..SolitaryProduces no honey

Horned mason beeOsmia cornutaA large, strikingly marked mason bee of continental Europe — jet black in front and bright orange-red behind — and one of the species managed commercially for orchard pollination alongside the red mason bee. Females carry two conspicuous horns on the face, used to tamp mud into place..SolitaryProduces no honey

Metallic green sweat beeAgapostemonBrilliant metallic green bees of the American grasslands and gardens, and among the most immediately recognisable small bees anywhere. In several species the sexes differ sharply: females are entirely metallic green while males have a green thorax and a boldly yellow-and-black striped abdomen, which leads to a great deal of confused reporting..Communal — shared entrance, separate cellsProduces no honey

Augochlora beesAugochloraBrilliant metallic green sweat bees that nest in rotting wood rather than in soil — unusual among halictids, and the reason they persist in closed woodland where ground-nesting bees cannot. Augochlora pura is a common and dazzling bee of eastern North American forest, and it is entirely solitary despite belonging to a largely social family..SolitaryProduces no honey

Great banded furrow beeHalictus scabiosaeA large, boldly banded sweat bee that has expanded rapidly northwards across Europe and reached southern England within the last two decades. It is socially flexible — nests may be solitary or contain several females with one reproducing — and it is one of the most conspicuous halictids anyone in northern Europe is likely to meet..Primitively eusocialProduces no honey

Mourning beesMelectaBlack, sparsely haired cleptoparasites marked with tufts of white hair, parasitising the digger bees whose nests they follow. They emerge with their hosts in early spring and patrol the same old walls and earth banks, and their name records the funereal colouring rather than any behaviour..Cleptoparasitic — lays in other bees' nestsProduces no honey

Nomad beesNomadaThe most numerous group of cuckoo bees, and the ones most often mistaken for wasps. Nomada are near-hairless, boldly marked in red, yellow and black, and they patrol mining bee aggregations searching for provisioned cells.Cleptoparasitic — lays in other bees' nestsProduces no honey

Small scissor beesChelostomaTiny, slender, cylindrical mason-bee relatives that nest in the narrowest cavities of any bee — beetle holes barely two millimetres across — and several of which provision their cells with pollen from a single plant genus. The harebell carpenter bee uses campanula pollen and nothing else, and males sleep inside the closed bells..SolitaryProduces no honey

Sharp-collared furrow beeLasioglossum malachurumA small sweat bee that is one of the best-studied examples of primitive eusociality anywhere. A single foundress produces a first brood of small workers who forage for her, and only later are reproductive females produced — a genuine caste system without the sharp physical separation honey bees show, and one that switches on and off with latitude..Primitively eusocialProduces no honey

Brown-banded carder beeBombus humilisA scarce gingery carder bee of unimproved grassland, coastal grazing marsh and brownfield land, and one of the group of British bumblebees whose decline tracks the loss of flower-rich grassland almost exactly. It is difficult to separate in the field from the common carder bee, which is part of why its status took so long to establish..Eusocial, colony dies each autumnKeeps only a few days of stores

Ruderal bumblebeeBombus ruderatusBritain's largest bumblebee and one of its scarcest, a long-tongued legume specialist that declined severely through the twentieth century. It was also shipped to New Zealand and Chile in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to pollinate red clover, and in Chile it became one of the introduced species implicated in the collapse of the native giant bumblebee..Eusocial, colony dies each autumnKeeps only a few days of stores

Arctic bumblebeeBombus polarisThe northernmost bee in the world, nesting within a few hundred kilometres of the pole on Ellesmere Island and northern Greenland. It survives by being the most effective thermoregulator of any insect — a queen can hold her thorax above 30 °C in air near freezing — and by compressing a whole colony cycle into an Arctic summer of a few weeks..Eusocial, colony dies each autumnKeeps only a few days of stores

Western bumblebeeBombus occidentalisOnce among the commonest bumblebees of western North America and now scarce across much of that range, in a decline that began abruptly in the late 1990s. It was also reared commercially for glasshouse pollination until production collapsed from disease — which is the same period, and probably not a coincidence..Eusocial, colony dies each autumnKeeps only a few days of stores

Common eastern bumblebeeBombus impatiensNorth America's commercially reared bumblebee, produced by the million for glasshouse tomato and berry pollination, and the continent's counterpart to Europe's buff-tailed bumblebee in both usefulness and controversy. It is abundant, adaptable and thriving while several of its relatives collapse — and its commercial rearing is implicated in some of those collapses..Eusocial, colony dies each autumnKeeps only a few days of stores

Vestal cuckoo bumblebeeBombus vestalisThe commonest cuckoo bumblebee in southern Britain, and a specialist parasite of the buff-tailed bumblebee. A female invades an established colony, kills or subdues the resident queen, and the host workers then raise her offspring — which means the host colony's own reproduction ends entirely..Cleptoparasitic — lays in other bees' nestsProduces no honey

Japanese orchard beeOsmia cornifronsA Japanese mason bee managed at scale for apple pollination since the 1940s, and introduced to the United States in the 1970s for the same purpose. In parts of Japan it pollinates the great majority of the apple crop, which makes it one of the few genuine success stories in deploying a non-honey-bee pollinator commercially — and, in North America, a naturalised species now competing with natives..SolitaryProduces no honey

Early mining beeAndrena haemorrhoaOne of the commonest and earliest mining bees in northern Europe, and among the first solitary bees most people see each year. It has a neat combination of markings that makes it genuinely identifiable in the field, which is unusual in a genus of 1,500 species, and it nests in lawns and banks in loose aggregations..SolitaryProduces no honey

Vernal colletesColletes cuniculariusA large spring plasterer bee that emerges in March for willow catkins and forms some of the most spectacular nesting aggregations in northern Europe — tens of thousands of burrows in a single dune slope, with clouds of males patrolling above them waiting for females to emerge..SolitaryProduces no honey

Patchwork leafcutter beeMegachile centuncularisThe leafcutter most gardeners actually meet, and the one responsible for the neat semicircular notches in rose and lilac leaves each summer. A female cuts an oval disc in a few seconds, flies off with it held beneath her body, and glues it into a thimble-shaped cell inside a hollow stem or a bee hotel tube..SolitaryProduces no honey

Eastern carpenter beeXylocopa virginicaNorth America's familiar large carpenter bee, and the one that hovers menacingly in front of people around porches and decking each spring. The hovering is done by males, which have no sting whatsoever.SolitaryProduces no honey

Resin beesHeriadesTiny, cylindrical, near-black mason-bee relatives that gather sticky plant resin to seal their nests, and which specialise almost entirely on composites. They use very fine cavities, they have disproportionately large heads for their size, and a nest sealed with a shining resin plug is the sign they have been there..SolitaryProduces no honey

Blunthorn beesMelittaGround-nesting bees from one of the oldest bee lineages, and mostly tight floral specialists. Melitta species provision their cells with pollen from a single plant genus — bellflowers, knapweed, heather or bird's-foot trefoil depending on the species — and they belong to a family that includes the oil-collecting bees and is now thought to contain the closest living relatives of the ancestral bee..SolitaryProduces no honey

Shaggy beesPanurgusSmall, entirely black bees with conspicuously shaggy pollen brushes, found almost exclusively on yellow composites. They nest in bare sandy ground in aggregations, and the males have a habit of sleeping inside closed flower heads overnight — several can be found packed into a single hawkbit on a cool morning..SolitaryProduces no honey

Dark beesStelisSmall, dark, sparsely haired cleptoparasites that target the cavity-nesting megachilids — mason bees, leafcutters, scissor bees and resin bees. They are among the parasites that turn up in a bee hotel, and their presence indicates a host population large enough to be worth exploiting rather than a problem to be solved..Cleptoparasitic — lays in other bees' nestsProduces no honey

Long-horned beeEucera longicornisA declining British bee whose males carry antennae longer than their own bodies, and the species several bee orchids have evolved to impersonate. The orchid produces a flower resembling a female Eucera in shape, texture and scent closely enough that males attempt to mate with it, picking up pollen in the process — one of the most extraordinary pollination systems in botany..SolitaryProduces no honey

Blue-banded beeAmegillaFast, stocky solitary bees marked with brilliant iridescent blue or white bands, and among the most effective buzz pollinators anywhere. They grip a flower and vibrate their flight muscles at a frequency that shakes pollen out of tubular anthers — the technique tomatoes require and honey bees cannot perform — which has made them the subject of serious commercial pollination research in Australia..SolitaryProduces no honey

Melipona beesMeliponaThe large stingless bees of the American tropics, and the ones worth keeping for honey. Melipona are honey bee sized or bigger, build substantial colonies, and store enough surplus that a hive can be harvested annually without ruining it — which is why every major indigenous beekeeping tradition in the Americas is built on this genus rather than on the smaller meliponines around it..Eusocial, colony survives the winterStores a harvestable surplus

Tetragonula beesTetragonulaThe small stingless bees of Asia and Australia, and the genus behind both the Malaysian kelulut industry and Australian sugarbag honey. They are tiny — often three or four millimetres — and they build spiral brood combs and elaborate resin nest entrances that are frequently the easiest way to find them..Eusocial, colony survives the winterStores small quantities, occasionally harvested

Scaptotrigona beesScaptotrigonaThe populous and pugnacious stingless bees of Mesoamerica. Scaptotrigona colonies run to tens of thousands of workers rather than the few hundred typical of Melipona, and they defend themselves vigorously — which makes them a very different animal to keep, and a considerably more productive one..Eusocial, colony survives the winterStores a harvestable surplus

African stingless beesMeliponulaThe least documented stingless bees on earth. Africa has its own meliponine genera, harvested across the equatorial belt for honey valued well above Apis honey, and they are known largely from museum specimens and from the people who harvest them rather than from research..Eusocial, colony survives the winterStores small quantities, occasionally harvested

JataíTetragonisca angustulaThe most widely kept stingless bee in the Americas and the easiest to recognise — a small golden bee with a wax entrance tube guarded by soldiers that hover in the air outside it, which almost no other bee does..Eusocial, colony survives the winterStores small quantities, occasionally harvested

KelulutHeterotrigona itamaThe bee behind Southeast Asia's stingless honey industry. Heterotrigona itama is larger than most Asian meliponines, takes readily to log and box hives, and produces enough honey to have supported an industry that barely existed before 2000 and now has its own national standard in Malaysia..Eusocial, colony survives the winterStores small quantities, occasionally harvested

UruçuMelipona scutellarisThe large stingless bee of northeastern Brazil's Atlantic forest, and the species most Brazilian meliponiculture in the region is built around. Colonies are strong by meliponine standards, which is what makes commercial production possible at all..Eusocial, colony survives the winterStores a harvestable surplus

JandaíraMelipona subnitidaThe stingless bee of the Brazilian caatinga, adapted to a semi-arid thorn forest where the flowering follows the rains and the dry season can last most of a year. Smaller than uruçu, and the species most caatinga meliponiculture is built on..Eusocial, colony survives the winterStores a harvestable surplus

Robber stingless beesLestrimelittaThe stingless bees that gather no food of their own. Lestrimelitta have lost the pollen-carrying apparatus entirely and live by raiding other meliponine nests — a whole genus of eusocial bees that has abandoned foraging, and the clearest possible demonstration that being a stingless bee does not mean producing honey worth harvesting..Eusocial, colony survives the winterProduces no honey

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