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Plasterer Bees
Colletidae
The Colletidae are a family of bees, and are often referred to collectively as plasterer bees or polyester bees, due to the method of smoothing the walls of their nest cells with secretions applied with their mouthparts; these secretions dry into a cellophane-like lining. The five subfamilies, 54 genera, and over 2000 species are all evidently solitary, though many nest in aggregations. Two of the subfamilies, Euryglossinae and Hylaeinae, lack the external pollen-carrying apparatus (the scopa)...
9 branches of this family, most-observed first

Hylaeinae
subfamilyHylaeinae

Colletinae
subfamilyColletinae

Neopasiphaeinae
subfamilyNeopasiphaeinae

Diphaglossinae
subfamilyDiphaglossinae

Euryglossinae
subfamilyEuryglossinae

Xeromelissinae
subfamilyXeromelissinae

Callomelittinae
subfamilyCallomelittinae

Scraptrinae
subfamilyScraptrinae

Paracolletinae
subfamilyParacolletinae
Where it lives
Recorded sightings
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geo-referenced records in GBIF, from museums, herbaria and field observers.
Drag the globe to turn it. Dots are where records exist, not a range map; darker means more records.
In the stacks
Searching the stacks…
Every page naming Colletidae in the Biodiversity Heritage Library →
This page is assembled live from iNaturalist, GBIF, Wikipedia, the Source Library and the Internet Archive. It is not yet part of the hand-edited codex. iNaturalist taxon 127740.