Bindweed turret bee
Diadasia bituberculata
The bindweed turret bee builds a little tower out of soil above the door of its nest. It lives alone, but many of these bees often nest close together. You can find their tiny towers on flat, bare ground, even in car parks.
Lives in
Western North America, mostly California, from Oregon down to Baja California in Mexico
What does it eat?
It drinks nectar and collects pollen from flowers such as false bindweed and thistles. The babies eat the pollen their mother leaves them.
How fast is it?
A kid running fast about 13 km/h (8.1 mph)
Bindweed turret bee about 22 km/h (14 mph)
A grown-up on a bike about 25 km/h (16 mph)
A car driving in town about 50 km/h (31 mph)
cool stuff
Fun facts
1
It mixes flower nectar with soil to make the mud for its tower.
2
The tower may help keep out a fly whose babies like to eat bee babies.
3
Grown-up bees fly only for a few months, from about April to July.
4
The mother lays just one or two eggs in each nest and leaves pollen for the babies to eat.
you asked
Most asked questions about Bindweed turret bee
?Why does the turret bee build a tower?
The tube of soil over its nest door may protect its babies from a fly that attacks them.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Diadasia bituberculata
- Group
- Bees and bumblebees
- Family
- Apidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Hymenoptera > Apidae
- Lives on
- North America
- Also known as
- Bindweed bee
Where the facts come from
- Diadasia bituberculata (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 (c) George Williams, some rights reserved (CC BY). CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
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