A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
1469 entries
mason bee
A mason bee is a solitary bee that builds its nest cells out of mud. The female finds a hollow stem, a beetle hole, or a gap in masonry, packs a wall of mud at the back, provisions a cell with pollen, lays an egg on it, seals the cell with another mud wall, and repeats until the tunnel is full. She then caps the end and dies. Every female is fertile and works alone, with no queen, no workers, and no hive.
Etymology
The English name is for the building. The Latin genus name is Greek for horned, from a pair of small horns on the female’s face that she uses to work the mud into place.
Notes
Mason bees are extremely efficient pollinators of fruit trees, because they carry dry pollen loose on the underside of the abdomen rather than packed and wetted on the legs, so it falls off readily onto the next flower. A few hundred of them can pollinate an orchard that would need tens of thousands of honeybees. She lays female eggs at the back of the tunnel and males at the front, so the males emerge first.