Gold-fringed mason bee
The gold-fringed mason bee is a small furry bee with rusty red and golden hair. It does something amazing: it builds its nest inside an empty snail shell. It lives in sunny places on chalky ground across Europe.
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Fun facts
It likes big empty snail shells best, especially the shells of the large Roman snail.
It builds the walls between its baby rooms from chewed leaves, for example strawberry leaves.
When the nest is ready, it covers the outside of the shell with chewed plant paste, like a camouflage net.
Once the nest is closed, the shell is left exactly where it lies and is not moved again.
It flies from March to July, and in Switzerland sometimes until September.
Most asked questions about Gold-fringed mason bee
?Where does the gold-fringed mason bee make its nest?
Inside an empty snail shell. It splits the shell into little rooms for its babies and hides it with chewed plants.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Osmia aurulenta
- Named by
- Panzer, 1799
- Group
- Bees and bumblebees
- Family
- Megachilidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Hymenoptera > Megachilidae
- Lives on
- Europe, Asia
Where the facts come from
- Osmia aurulenta (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 Arnstein Staverløkk/Norsk institutt for naturforskning. CC BY 3.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
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