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Long-horned bees

Eucera and MelissodesSolitaryProduces no honey

A group rather than a single species — Several hundred species between the two genera — Eucera largely Eurasian and Melissodes largely American — within the wider tribe Eucerini. General statements below are statements about the group.

Solitary 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.

Can it sting?

Females can sting and rarely do. There is no colony and no store to defend, and the males — which is what most people encounter, patrolling flowers in numbers — cannot sting at all.

How to recognise it

Robust, furry, honey-bee-sized to larger, usually brown or gingery with pale abdominal bands. The males' antennae are the giveaway: extremely long, sometimes exceeding body length, and swept back in flight. Females have shorter antennae and dense pollen brushes on the hind legs.

  • Male antennae absurdly long — the single most reliable field character in the group.
  • Stout, furry, fast-flying bees on legumes and composites in high summer.
  • Females carrying large dry pollen loads on very hairy hind legs.
  • Often seen in numbers at a single patch of vetch, knapweed or sunflower.

Body length 8–18 mm (typically 13 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
Burrows in the ground

Excavates burrows in firm bare or sparsely vegetated ground, often on south-facing slopes, coastal cliffs and unimproved grassland, and frequently in loose aggregations. Cells are lined with a waterproof secretion and provisioned with a firm pollen loaf.

Carries pollen
Scopa — dense hairs on the hind leg
On the wing
May to September

Lifecycle

  1. EmergenceMales emerge before females — sometimes by a week or more — and patrol the emergence area and the forage plants waiting for them. This male-first pattern is what makes orchid deception viable, because it creates a window of frustrated males with no real females available.May to June in Europe.
  2. NestingFemales provision cells with pollen from a narrow range of plants, working alone through the summer.Four to eight weeks.
  3. OverwinteringThe larva develops on its provision and overwinters underground as a prepupa, emerging the next summer. One generation a year.Roughly ten months.

Where it lives and what it does

Habitat
Unimproved flower-rich grassland, coastal grassland and cliffs, brownfield sites, and field margins with abundant legumes. In Europe the strongest populations are on old grassland that has never been fertilised or reseeded.
Distribution
Eucera across Europe, North Africa and Asia; Melissodes across the Americas, where it is one of the most abundant summer bee genera. Both extend into warm temperate and semi-arid regions.
Behaviour
Fast, loud, low-flying and conspicuous when present. Males patrol favoured flower patches persistently and investigate anything of roughly the right size and scent, which is precisely the behaviour Ophrys orchids exploit. Several species are strongly tied to particular plant families and forage almost entirely within them.
Pollination role
Important pollinators of legumes in Europe and of composites — sunflowers above all — in the Americas. Melissodes species are significant wild pollinators of commercial sunflower and cotton, and their presence measurably increases seed set alongside managed honey bees. Their role in the Ophrys orchid system is ecologically small and biologically remarkable: the orchid gets pollinated, the bee gets nothing at all, and the whole arrangement depends on the male emerging first.

High on the plant families they specialise in, and negligible outside them.

What it forages on
Eucera favours the pea family — vetches, clovers, bird's-foot trefoil, sainfoin. Melissodes favours the daisy family, and sunflower in particular. Both are narrower than a honey bee and neither is a strict specialist.

Honey

Produces no honey

None. Solitary, one provision per cell, no colony and no winter to store for.

Relationship with people

How people interact with it
Barely noticed as insects and disproportionately famous through the orchids that imitate them. Their agricultural contribution to sunflower and legume pollination is real and largely uncosted.
Conservation
Several European Eucera species have declined sharply with the loss of unimproved flower-rich grassland; Eucera longicornis is a UK conservation priority. The pattern is the ordinary one — a bee that needs both bare nesting ground and abundant legumes within flying range, and modern grassland that offers neither.

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
  • HoneyHQ editorial synthesis — HEKNO Ltd · HoneyHQ synthesis

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

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