Females may reach about 11–15 mm long.
Fine-art photographic collection
Sphecodes albilabris
A large blood-red cuckoo bee that invades another bee’s burrow, destroys the egg and takes the stored pollen.
About this species
Great Blood Bee
Sphecodes albilabris(Fabricius, 1793)
Information reviewed15 July 2026
Sphecodes albilabris is one of Europe’s largest blood bees. It is a specialist cleptoparasite of the vernal colletes, Colletes cunicularius, and follows the host’s spring nesting aggregations.
Taxonomy
Animalia · Arthropoda · Insecta · Hymenoptera · Halictidae · Sphecodes
Accepted taxon. · checked 2026-07-15
Europe, North Africa and western AsiaBroad range and selected reference localities — not a complete occurrence map.
Europe, North Africa and western Asia
Sandy banks, dunes, quarries and open ground where Colletes cunicularius nests.
Females search host nests in spring; the new generation appears later in the year.
Adults take nectar; larvae consume provisions gathered by the host bee.
Solitary cleptoparasite.
What makes this species remarkable?
The female is a large black-and-blood-red bee that searches dense host aggregations instead of collecting a single grain of pollen herself.
Inside a Colletes cell she destroys the host egg and replaces it, leaving her own larva to consume the entire pollen provision.
The species followed its host into Britain and was first confirmed there only recently, demonstrating how a parasite can expand behind its host’s range.
More photographs
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