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.

   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

   2 more examples

   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

   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

   Synonyms: polyester bee