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Blood bees

SphecodesCleptoparasitic — lays in other bees' nestsProduces no honey

A genus rather than a single species — Around 300 species worldwide, all of them cleptoparasites, and most parasitising sweat bees and mining bees. General statements below are statements about the group.

Small, 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.

Can it sting?

Females have a sting and use it on people essentially never. The hard cuticle is armour against host females, which attack intruders vigorously. Males cannot sting.

How to recognise it

Small to medium, shining black with a bright blood-red band across the front half of the abdomen. Almost hairless with a hard, heavily punctured cuticle, and no pollen-carrying structures of any kind.

  • Blood-red abdomen against a black body — unmistakable at close range.
  • Sparse hair, shining hard cuticle, and no pollen brushes anywhere.
  • Flying low and searching over ground where sweat bees and mining bees nest.
  • Never seen carrying pollen, because it collects none.

Body length 4–13 mm (typically 8 mm).

Biology

Social organisation

Cleptoparasitic — lays in other bees' nests

Builds no nest and gathers no pollen for her own young, laying instead in another bee's provisioned cell. Sometimes called cuckoo bees.

Nesting
Builds no nest

Builds nothing. The female enters a host burrow, and in many Sphecodes species destroys the host's egg directly before laying her own on the provision — a more forceful strategy than the delayed larval killing used by Nomada and Coelioxys.

Carries pollen
Carries no pollen for young
On the wing
April to September

Lifecycle

  1. SearchingThe female patrols host nesting aggregations, entering burrows and testing them. Emergence is timed to the host's.
  2. Host destruction and layingShe kills or removes the host egg and lays her own on the pollen provision the host female collected.
  3. DevelopmentThe larva consumes the provision and overwinters on the host's schedule.

Where it lives and what it does

Habitat
Wherever the hosts are — sandy banks, brownfield land, heathland, gardens and grassland with nesting aggregations.
Distribution
Worldwide except Australia, following the distribution of halictid and andrenid bees.
Behaviour
Slow and searching rather than purposeful, and because they need no pollen they spend far less time at flowers than their hosts do. Their host associations are often narrow, and several species are known to parasitise a single host species.
Pollination role
Negligible. They visit flowers only for their own fuel and carry no pollen deliberately. Their significance is as an indicator of host abundance.

Incidental only. As with all cleptoparasites, the value is diagnostic rather than functional.

What it forages on
Visits flowers for nectar only and is unfussy about which.

Honey

Produces no honey

None. No nest, no colony, no stores.

Relationship with people

How people interact with it
Routinely killed as wasps when noticed. There is no pest relationship and no management question, only a recording one.
Conservation
Several species are scarce, and as obligate parasites they decline faster than their hosts and recover more slowly. Their presence indicates a host population large and stable enough to support a parasite.

Sources

  • Field Guide to the Bees of Great Britain and Ireland — Bloomsbury (2015) · Field guide
  • The Bees of the World — Johns Hopkins University Press (2007) · Textbook

How sources are selected and weighted is set out in the sources and evidence policy.

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