Dictionary

plasterer bee en · NOUN

Meanings

1. Any bee of the subfamily Colletinae, solitary bees that secrete a substance from their mouthparts to give a cellophane-like lining to their nests.
   • The plasterer bees, as we have seen, line the interior walls of their subterranean chambers with a waterproof wallpaper; others achieve a similar result by impregnating the cell walls with a glandular secretion or coating them with a waxy material. 1974, Karl von Frisch, Otto von Frisch, Animal Architecture, page 68:
   • Plasterer bees build mud nests in the mouldings, butterflies brush the scenery with brilliant colour — lemon-yellow brimstones, dappled whites, large tortoiseshells and swallowtails are all there for the spotting. 1989, Pamela Westland, Exploring Rural Greece, page 27:
   • Like masked bees, plasterer bees (Colletinae) line their rows of cells with a mixture of saliva and glandular secretion that hardens into a cellophane-like membrane.[…]Each female plasterer bee fashions roughly ten brood cells separated by plaster-like walls and leaves a honey-pollen clump and one egg in every cell (see the bottom of Figure 5.1). 2002, Karl Weiss, The Little Book of Bees, page 48:

Forms

Hypernyms

colletid (solitary bee)

Synonyms

polyester bee (any species of subfamily Colletinae)