Large scabious mining bee
The large scabious mining bee is a big, dark bee with a reddish band on its belly. It is very picky: it collects pollen almost only from field scabious, a meadow flower with pale purple pincushion heads. The mother digs her own nest in sandy ground.
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Fun facts
It is endangered, because there are fewer old-style hay meadows full of scabious.
Its nest has five to ten little rooms, each with one egg and a ball of pollen.
On a good day, a mother makes one baby room, and only five to ten in her whole life.
A cuckoo bee sneaks its own eggs into its nest.
It is big enough to be spotted from 5 metres away.
Most asked questions about Large scabious mining bee
?Why is the large scabious mining bee endangered?
It needs scabious flowers and old hay meadows, and there are fewer of them now.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Andrena hattorfiana
- Group
- Bees and bumblebees
- Family
- Andrenidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Hymenoptera > Andrenidae
- Lives on
- Europe, Asia
Where the facts come from
- Andrena hattorfiana (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 Hectonichus. CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
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