Primitively eusocial
Bees living this way. Around ninety per cent of bee species are solitary, and the social ones people picture when they think of bees are a small and unrepresentative minority.
3 records · social structure
- 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. They are also small, abundant, easily overlooked, and among the most important wild pollinators in temperate and tropical agriculture alike.
- 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.
- 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.
Other social structure groups
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