Bicoloured miner
The bicoloured miner is a small mining bee that digs its nest in the ground. The female has a reddish brown furry back and a black hairy face. On her back legs she has bright orange hairs that look like a pair of orange leg warmers.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
Its nest tunnel in the ground can be more than 1 metre long.
It has two families a year: one flies in spring from March to June, and another in summer from June to August.
The spring bees visit lots of different flowers, but the summer females mostly visit bellflowers like the harebell.
In Ukraine it is one of the most important helpers for cherry farmers, because it carries pollen between cherry blossoms.
It likes to nest in bare ground on sunny, south facing slopes.
Most asked questions about Bicoloured miner
?Where does the bicoloured miner make its nest?
In a tunnel it digs in bare ground, often on a sunny slope. The tunnel can be over a metre long.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Andrena bicolor
- Group
- Bees and bumblebees
- Family
- Andrenidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Hymenoptera > Andrenidae
- Lives on
- Europe, Africa, Asia
- Also known as
- Gwynne's mining bee
Where the facts come from
- Andrena bicolor (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by S. Rae from Scotland, UK. CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
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