White-lipped blood bee
Sphecodes albilabris
Name means: “white lip, because the male has a snow-white hairy lower face”
The white-lipped blood bee is a sneaky bee. It does not collect pollen for its own babies. Instead the mother lays her eggs in the nest of another bee, and her young eat the food that bee gathered.
Lives in
Europe, North Africa and across Asia, in sandy places
Length
1.1 to 1.4 cm (0.43 to 0.55 in)
What does it eat?
The adults drink nectar. The young grow up in another bee's nest and eat the food stored there.
How big is it?
How long is it?
🍚as long as 2.5 grains of rice in a row⚽could fly across a whole football pitch in 16 seconds⚡moves 480 times its own body length every second
How big is White-lipped blood bee compared to YOU?
Just maths in your browser. Nothing is saved or sent anywhere.
How fast is it?
A kid running fast about 13 km/h (8.1 mph)
White-lipped blood bee about 24 km/h (15 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
1
Females fly from March to August, and males from July to October.
2
It likes sandy places like dunes, sand pits and sandy grasslands.
3
It lives as far north as Norway, Sweden and Finland.
you asked
Most asked questions about White-lipped blood bee
?Why is it called white-lipped?
The male has snow-white hair on the lower half of his face.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Sphecodes albilabris
- Group
- Bees and bumblebees
- Family
- Halictidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Hymenoptera > Halictidae
- Lives on
- Europe, Africa, Asia
Where the facts come from
- Sphecodes albilabris (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 Gilles San Martin. CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
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