English

Colletes cunicularius

Noun

plasterer bee ‎(plural plasterer bees)

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.
   • 1974, Karl von Frisch, Otto von Frisch, Animal Architecture, page 68,

     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.

   • 1989, Pamela Westland, Exploring Rural Greece, page 27,

     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.

   • 2002, Karl Weiss, The Little Book of Bees, page 48,

     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).

Synonyms

• (any species of subfamily Colletinae): polyester bee

Hypernyms

• (solitary bee): colletid (bee of family Colletidae)