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Sticker of Bellflower resin bee
Bug card No. 0335 of 4,939

Bellflower resin bee

Megachile campanulae
Name means: “big lip, little bell”

The bellflower resin bee is a bee that lives all on its own, not in a big hive. The mother bee builds her nest inside a little hole, like a crack in a fence or a hollow stem. She seals her baby rooms with sticky plant resin, mud and tiny pebbles.

Lives in
Eastern North America, in gardens, meadows and along woods
Top speed
about 22 km/h (14 mph)
Flying, estimate
What does it eat?
It drinks nectar and collects pollen from many flowers, and it often visits bellflowers. Its babies eat a ball of pollen that the mother leaves for them.
For real!Photo of Bellflower resin bee
Picture by USGS Native Bee Inventory and Monitoring Laboratory. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

How fast is it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

1

In 2013 scientists found that some of these bees had built their nests with plastic sealant from buildings. They were the first insects known to do that.

2

The mother builds her nest as a long row of little rooms in a tube and lays one egg in each room.

3

It also likes to nest in bee hotels that people hang up in gardens.

4

It carries pollen on the hairy underside of its tummy, not on its legs like a honeybee.

5

The babies spend the winter as pupae in the nest and come out as bees in spring.

you asked

Most asked questions about Bellflower resin bee

?Does the bellflower resin bee make honey?

No. It lives alone and does not make honey, but it helps many plants by carrying their pollen.

?Where does the bellflower resin bee live?

In eastern North America.

For bug experts

Scientific name
Megachile campanulae
Named by
Robertson, 1903
Group
Bees and bumblebees
Family
Megachilidae
Classification
Insecta > Hymenoptera > Megachilidae
Lives on
North America

Where the facts come from

  1. Megachile campanulae (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
  2. Picture by USGS Native Bee Inventory and Monitoring Laboratory. Public domain, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this 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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