''Andrena barbilabris'', the bearded miner bee, is a species of

miner bee A miner is a person who extracts ore, coal, chalk, clay, or other minerals from the earth through mining. There are two senses in which the term is used. In its narrowest sense, a miner is someone who works at the rock face; cutting, blasting, ...

in the family Andrenidae. It is found in Europe and Northern Asia (excluding China) and North America.

Description

The bearded miner bee is commonly around 11 mm in length, the males being smaller and slenderer than the females. The females have rufous hairs on the dorsal surface of the thorax which contrast with the yellower hairs on its sides and head. The males can appear silvery in colour because of the long pale hairs on their thorax. The integument is largely black. It has a narrow head which gives this species a rather hunch-backed appearance.

Distribution

The bearded miner bee has a Holarctic distribution, being found across North America in southern Canada and the northern United States. In Eurasia it is distributed from western Europe to Anatolia, into western and eastern Siberia to the Russian Far East in Yakutia and Primorsky Krai and in Japan. In Britain and Ireland it has a patchy, localised distribution as far north as

Inverness Inverness (; from the gd, Inbhir Nis , meaning "Mouth of the River Ness"; sco, Innerness) is a city in the Scottish Highlands. It is the administrative centre for The Highland Council and is regarded as the capital of the Highlands. Histori ...

, it is scarcer in Ireland. It also occurs on

Guernsey Guernsey (; Guernésiais: ''Guernési''; french: Guernesey) is an island in the English Channel off the coast of Normandy that is part of the Bailiwick of Guernsey, a British Crown Dependency. It is the second largest of the Channel Islands ...

and Jersey in the Channel Islands.

Habitat and ecology

The bearded miner bee has a strong association with light, sandy soils. The male and female bees emerge from their underground cells in the early Spring. Following emergence they mate and the females then search out sites to excavate their nesting burrows. In the burrow, the females dig out small cells within which they place a ball of

pollen Pollen is a powdery substance produced by seed plants. It consists of pollen grains (highly reduced microgametophytes), which produce male gametes (sperm cells). Pollen grains have a hard coat made of sporopollenin that protects the gametophyt ...

mixed with

nectar Nectar is a sugar-rich liquid produced by plants in glands called nectaries or nectarines, either within the flowers with which it attracts pollinating animals, or by extrafloral nectaries, which provide a nutrient source to animal mutualists ...

. She then lays a single egg on each ball and seals it into its cell. The nest is not obvious and the female relies on her sense of scent to locate the nest. The nest is hidden under a thin layer of sand and the bee digs into the nest in a short time. The flight period of these bees is from March to July and they forage on a wide variety of flowers. Willows are their preferred plant for foraging on and they usually remain within 300m of their nests. These "solitary" bees form small aggregations of nests in loose sandy soil, even nesting between paving stones in gardens. Unlike other bees in the genus '' Andrena'', the presence of the specialized

cleptoparasitic Kleptoparasitism (etymologically, parasitism by theft) is a form of feeding in which one animal deliberately takes food from another. The strategy is evolutionarily stable when stealing is less costly than direct feeding, which can mean when fo ...

bee from the genus ''

Sphecodes ''Sphecodes'' is a genus of bees from the family Halictidae, the majority of which are black and red in colour and are colloquially known as blood bees. ''Sphecodes'' bees are kleptoparasitic on other bees, especially bees in the genera ''Lasioglo ...

'', namely ''

Sphecodes pellucidus ''Sphecodes pellucidus '' is a Palearctic The Palearctic or Palaearctic is the largest of the eight biogeographic realms of the Earth. It stretches across all of Eurasia north of the foothills of the Himalayas, and North Africa. The realm c ...

'' often alerts the observer to the presence of its host as it digs into the sand, seeking out the nests of the Bearded Miner Bees.

References

External links

* {{Taxonbar, from=Q2695880 barbilabris Articles created by Qbugbot Insects described in 1802 Taxobox binomials not recognized by IUCN