Mourning bees
| Mourning bees | ||||||||||
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Melecta luctuosa while sleeping |
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| Systematics | ||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||
| Melecta | ||||||||||
| Latreille , 1802 |
The mourning bees ( Melecta ) are a genus of the Apidae family within the bees . The animals got their German name because of their mostly black hair.
features
The bees reach a body length of 12 to 17 millimeters and have a compact, bumblebee-like build. Apart from the common mourning bee ( Melecta albifrons ), the animals have black body hair and light patches of hair on the head, thorax , legs and abdomen. One can distinguish the genus from the similar spotted bees ( Thyreus ) by their two-sided thorny, monochrome black to brown hairy shields . It is difficult to distinguish between males and females.
Occurrence and way of life
Mourning bees live parasitically as cuckoo bees in fur bees of the genus Anthophora , which build their nests in steep walls, clay walls and clay joints on buildings and also on dry horizontal surfaces. In these places the females of the mourning bees are often found looking for an unguarded host's nest in which they lay an egg in the already closed brood cell. The cell cover is pierced with the pointed end of the abdomen and then closed again with soil. Pupation takes place in a loosely spun cocoon . The mating takes place near the host nests. The adults feed on nectar, mostly mint family . (Lamiaceae). At night, the animals often rest with their mandibles clinging to parts of the plant.
The animals can occasionally bring a colony of fur bees to a standstill, but the relationship between host and parasite is still naturally balanced. The animals fly in one generation per year from April to July.
Species (Europe)
Of the 24 species in mourning bees coming Europe before, including in Central Europe five.
- Common mourning bee ( Melecta albifrons ), or M. armata or M. punctata (Forster, 1771)
- Melecta luctuosa (Scopoli, 1770)
- Melecta festiva Lieftinck, 1980
- Melecta obscura friezes, 1895
- Melecta aegyptiaca Radoszkowski, 1876
swell
Individual evidence
literature
- Heiko Bellmann : bees, wasps, ants. Hymenoptera of Central Europe . Franckh-Kosmos Verlags-GmbH & Co KG, Stuttgart 1995, ISBN 3-440-09690-4 .
- Andreas Müller, Albert Krebs, Felix Amiet: Bees. Central European species, way of life, observation. Naturbuch-Verlag, Augsburg 1997, ISBN 3-89440-241-5 .
