Cuckoo bees

I just found another species of Cuckoo bee in the Garden - Genus Coelioxys.

Cuckoo bees are kleptoparasites, meaning they employ a feeding strategy where they steal food from another. In their case, it’s their young that rob other bee larvae of their food source. Cuckoo bees enter the nests of a host bee and lays an egg. When the egg hatches, the Cuckoo bee larva consumes the host larva's pollen ball, stealing resources that the host bee has already collected. Many cuckoo bees are closely related to their hosts and at times are similar in appearance, like this Sharp-tail bee is to a Leafcutter bee.

Although it may seem like a problem having these bees, we look at it in another way: the Garden’s native bee population is robust enough to attract these kleptoparasites and in turn add to the richness of the ecosystem.

With this find, I have now identified 4 species of Cuckoo bees in the GNG - California digger-cuckoo bee, Blood bee, Nomad bee and Sharp-tailed bee. Below are images of two of them.