Do euglossine females reside in a single nest? Notes on Euglossa cordata (Hymenoptera: Apidae: Euglossini)

Abstract

Euglossa Latreille, 1802 do not live in large colonies, and these are usually maintained or “reactivated” by new females, subordinate to their mother, which construct and provision brood cells. This study aimed to obtain information about the natural history of Euglossa cordata (Linnaeus, 1758) specially focusing on nest behavior. Our specific objective was to answer the following question: do E. cordata females reside in a single nest? We construct 14 artificial nesting boxes and made them available for E. cordata bees in natural environment for seven months. During this time, we use a re-marking method to identify bee fidelity to a single nest box. More specifically, we record bee permanence in the nests, the time bees take to provision brood to new cells and the time taken to offspring emergence. A total of 12 boxes were colonized by E. cordata and 23 cells were built in an average of 9.78 ± 11 days per cell. Eleven females emerged from the cells in 48.6 ± 11 days. Although adult females moved between nests and sometimes used multiple nests at the same time, E. cordata showed a relatively high fidelity to a single nest (81.1% of the female bees stayed in a single nest more than 50% of time).