Mandaçaia bee
It lives in Brazil in big families inside hollow trees. The door to its nest is so narrow that only one bee fits through at a time, and a guard bee always sits there.
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Fun facts
Its name mandaçaia means beautiful guard, because one bee always watches the nest entrance.
Farmers use it in greenhouses because it pollinates even better than honey bees, so the fruit grows bigger and heavier.
A family has about 300 to 400 bees living together.
When a new queen starts laying eggs, her tummy swells up to three times its size and she can never fly again.
It builds its nest with clay, and sometimes moves into old mud bird nests on telephone poles.
Most asked questions about Mandaçaia bee
?Where does the mandaçaia bee live?
It lives in south-east Brazil, mostly in nests inside hollow trees.
?Does the mandaçaia make honey?
Yes. It stores honey and pollen in its nest to feed the colony.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Melipona quadrifasciata
- Group
- Bees and bumblebees
- Family
- Apidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Hymenoptera > Apidae
- Lives on
- South America
Where the facts come from
- Melipona quadrifasciata (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 Thiago Mlaker. Public domain, Wikimedia Commons. The round sticker of this bug is cut from the same picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.
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