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Sticker of Common wasp-mimic bee
Bug card No. 1162 of 4,939

Common wasp-mimic bee

Hyleoides concinna
Name means: “concinna is Latin for beautiful”
Eats: Nectar and pollenBees and bumblebeesGardens and meadows6 legs

The common wasp-mimic bee is a bee in a wasp costume. Its body is black and orange, and it even holds its wings out in a V like a wasp. The trick probably scares off hungry birds, because wasps are fiercer than bees.

Lives in
South-eastern Australia, and now New Zealand too, in towns, woods and heath
Length
1 to 1.3 cm (0.39 to 0.51 in)
females are a little bigger than males
Top speed
about 23 km/h (14 mph)
Flying, estimate
Can it hurt you?
Can sting

Bees and wasps can sting! Read about stings on Venom Wiki →

What does it eat?
It drinks nectar and collects pollen from lots of different flowers, like eucalyptus and bottlebrush. Its babies eat a mix of nectar and pollen that their mother packs for them.
For real!Photo of Common wasp-mimic bee
Picture by Heath Hunter. CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

How big is it?

How long is it?

Common wasp-mimic bee about 1.3 cm long (0.51 in)A grain of rice about 6 mm (0.24 in)A toy building brick about 3.2 cm (1.3 in)
as long as 2 grains of rice in a rowcould fly across a whole football pitch in 16 secondsmoves 490 times its own body length every second

How big is Common wasp-mimic bee compared to YOU?

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How fast is it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

1

It fooled even the scientist who first named it in 1775. He thought it was a wasp.

2

The mother hangs a curtain of shiny threads over her nest door and often rests behind it with just her feelers poking out.

3

It nests in old tunnels in wood, and it is happy to move into a bee hotel too.

4

It carries pollen inside its body instead of on hairy legs like many other bees.

5

In 2019 it was on an Australian postage stamp.

you asked

Most asked questions about Common wasp-mimic bee

?How can you tell it is a bee and not a wasp?

It moves slowly from flower to flower and has small tufts of fluffy hair on its back.

?Where does the wasp-mimic bee live?

In south-eastern Australia. It also travelled to New Zealand by accident, hidden in wood.

For bug experts

Scientific name
Hyleoides concinna
Named by
Fabricius, 1775
Group
Bees and bumblebees
Family
Colletidae
Classification
Insecta > Hymenoptera > Colletidae
Lives on
Australia and Oceania

Where the facts come from

  1. Hyleoides concinna (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 Heath Hunter. CC BY-SA 4.0, 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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