Augochlora bees

How to recognise it

Small to medium, from 6 to 11 mm, and a brilliant metallic green — frequently more intensely green than Agapostemon, with a golden or coppery cast in some lights. Both sexes are metallic.

• Intense metallic green in both sexes.
• Nesting in rotting logs and stumps rather than in the ground.
• Found in and around woodland, where ground-nesting sweat bees are scarce.
• Solitary, despite the family's reputation for sociality.

Body length 6–11 mm (typically 8 mm).

Biology

Social organisation

Solitary

Each female builds and provisions her own nest with no workers and no caste. Most of the world's bee species.

Nesting

Tunnels excavated in wood

Excavates cells in soft rotting wood — fallen logs, stumps, and dead standing timber — which is why it occupies closed woodland that offers no bare soil. Cells are constructed within the decaying matrix and lined with a waterproof secretion.

Carries pollen

Scopa — dense hairs on the hind leg

On the wing

March to October

Lifecycle

1. 1EmergenceOverwintered mated females emerge in spring.March to April.
2. 2NestingEach female excavates and provisions cells alone in rotting wood through the season, producing several generations in warm regions.
3. 3OverwinteringMated females overwinter under bark and in logs, which is another reason dead wood matters.Autumn to spring.

Where it lives and what it does

Habitat

Deciduous woodland, forest edge, wooded gardens and parkland with abundant dead wood.

Distribution

Central and South America, with Augochlora pura widespread across the eastern United States and southern Canada.

Behaviour

Fast, small and forest-associated. Its wood-nesting habit is the distinguishing ecological trait: it makes the genus dependent on deadwood retention rather than on bare ground, which is a different conservation requirement from most of its family.

Pollination role

A useful generalist pollinator of woodland and woodland-edge flora, including spring ephemerals that flower before the canopy closes.

Moderate per individual and meaningful in aggregate, particularly in woodland where other bees are scarce.

What it forages on

Broad generalists on woodland and edge flora.

Honey

Produces no honey

None. Solitary, with provisions sized per cell.

Relationship with people

How people interact with it

Barely known and easily seen, since it is one of the more conspicuous insects on a woodland flower in eastern North America.

Conservation

Not threatened, and directly dependent on deadwood retention. Tidy woodland management and firewood collection remove the nest sites.