Texas leafcutter bee
The Texas leafcutter bee has a fluffy white coat of hair on its head and chest, and a black and pale striped tail end. It is a builder bee. It cuts little pieces out of leaves and uses them to line the rooms of its nest.
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Fun facts
It often digs its nest under a flat stone or a clump of earth in a field.
The tunnel to its nest can be up to 25 centimetres long, as long as a school ruler.
It lines every little room of its nest with pieces of leaf that it cuts out itself.
Each room gets a meal of pollen and nectar with one egg on top. The baby eats it all and then wraps itself in a cocoon.
Most asked questions about Texas leafcutter bee
?Why do leafcutter bees cut leaves?
They use the leaf pieces like wallpaper to line the rooms of their nest, where their babies grow.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Megachile texana
- Named by
- Cresson, 1878
- Group
- Bees and bumblebees
- Family
- Megachilidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Hymenoptera > Megachilidae
- Lives on
- North America
Where the facts come from
- Megachile texana (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 Sam Droege. CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
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