Green orchid bee
The green orchid bee is a little bee that shines bright metallic green, like a jewel. It can hover in the air for a long time and then zip from flower to flower. The males collect sweet smells from plants and keep them in special pockets on their back legs.

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Fun facts
A male mixes his own perfume from plant smells and fans it with his wings to attract a female.
It arrived in Florida by accident, maybe hiding in a wooden pallet, and was first spotted there in 2003.
The mother builds her nest out of sticky plant resin and lays one egg in each of up to twenty little rooms.
At first scientists thought it was a different bee. They had to look closely at the tiny teeth on the males' jaws to tell them apart.
Its very long tongue lets it reach nectar deep inside long, tube-shaped flowers.
Most asked questions about Green orchid bee
?How big is the green orchid bee?
It is about 1.3 centimetres long.
?Why does the male orchid bee collect perfume?
He uses the smells he gathers from plants to attract a female.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Euglossa dilemma
- Group
- Bees and bumblebees
- Family
- Apidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Hymenoptera > Apidae
- Lives on
- North America
- Also known as
- Dilemma orchid bee
Where the facts come from
- Euglossa dilemma (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by Bob Peterson from North Palm Beach, Florida, Planet Earth!. CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons. The round sticker of this bug is cut from the same picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.