Spiny-legged stingless bee

Trigona spinipes

Name means: “spiny feet”

It lives in huge families of thousands of bees. Its nest hangs high in a tree and is made of mud, wax, resin and plant bits.

Lives in

Brazil, Paraguay, Argentina and other parts of South America

Top speed

about 22 km/h (14 mph)

Can it hurt you?

Can sting

What does it eat?

It collects nectar and pollen from many flowers, like eucalyptus and aloe.

A kid running fast about 13 km/h (8.1 mph)

Spiny-legged stingless bee about 22 km/h (14 mph)

A grown-up on a bike about 25 km/h (16 mph)

A car driving in town about 50 km/h (31 mph)

cool stuff

Fun facts

One family can have from 5,000 to more than 100,000 worker bees.

In Brazil it is also called the dog bee.

Its nest is built 4 to 7 metres up in a tree and can be as big as 60 centimetres across.

It leaves smell trails, sometimes hundreds of metres long, to lead its sisters to food.

Its name spinipes means spiny feet in Latin.

you asked

?How many bees live in one nest?

From about 5,000 to more than 100,000 workers.

Trigona spinipes (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 José Reynaldo da Fonseca. CC BY 2.5, 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.

Bug Wiki honey jar For grown-ups: Bug Wiki is free, with no ads and no tracking. A small tip helps keep it online.Leave a tip