Bee-eating Beetle

• The female lays her eggs on flowers; the larvae latch onto the bees that visit them and ride to the nest, where they devour the larvae of the bee that carried them.
• It also colonises honeybee hives, though it rarely causes serious damage to strong colonies.
• Its red and black colouring is aposematic: it warns predators of its foul taste.
• The adult is harmless and eats pollen and other insects on flowers, but the larva is a parasite of bee nests: it slips into the cells and devours the bee larvae and their provisions.
• Hence the name: bee-eating beetle. In weak hives it can cause appreciable damage, although its main targets are wild solitary bees.
• Its red and black bands are aposematic and recall those of wasps and other insects with chemical defences.
• The female lays her eggs on the flowers that bees visit, and the newly hatched larvae let themselves be carried to the nest clinging to the bee's body.
• That system of reaching the nest by hitch-hiking on the host is the same one used by blister beetles such as the oil beetle and the Spanish fly.

Skeleton type

Invertebrate - chitin exoskeleton (insect)

Habitat and environment

Dry grassland and Mediterranean scrub with wild bees

Litter / clutch size

The females lay the eggs inside the nests of solitary bees (Osmia and Megachile) or in honeybee hives; the larvae devour the host's larvae and pupae

Sources consulted: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trichodes_apiarius; Ficha de especie de Trichodes apiarius; Bugwood / Insect Images; Ficha de especie de Trichodes apiarius (Fauna Europaea)

Best time: May to July, on flowering umbellifers and thistles