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Sticker of California digger bee
Bug card No. 0759 of 4,939

California digger bee

Anthophora californica

The California digger bee is a wild bee from North and Central America. It belongs to the same big bee family as honey bees and bumblebees. Its name tells you its trick: digger bees make their nests in the ground.

Lives in
North and Central America
Top speed
about 22 km/h (14 mph)
Flying, estimate
What does it eat?
Like other bees, it drinks sweet nectar from flowers and collects pollen to feed its babies.
For real!Photo of California digger bee
Picture by USGS Bee Inventory and Monitoring Lab from Beltsville, Maryland, USA. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

How fast is it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

1

There are two kinds of California digger bee, called subspecies, that look a little different.

2

It is a cousin of the honey bee, but it does not live in a big hive with thousands of other bees.

3

When a bee visits flowers, pollen sticks to its hairy body and it carries it from flower to flower. That helps plants make seeds.

you asked

Most asked questions about California digger bee

?Where does the California digger bee live?

It lives in North America and Central America.

For bug experts

Scientific name
Anthophora californica
Named by
Cresson, 1869
Group
Bees and bumblebees
Family
Apidae
Classification
Insecta > Hymenoptera > Apidae
Lives on
North America

Where the facts come from

  1. Anthophora californica (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 Bee Inventory and Monitoring Lab from Beltsville, Maryland, USA. 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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