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Sticker of Bee beetle
Bug card No. 0103 of 1,500

Bee beetle

Trichius fasciatus
Eats: Nectar and pollenBeetlesForests and woods6 legs

The bee beetle is a small, fuzzy beetle with yellow or orange wing cases crossed by black stripes. Its body is covered in soft yellow hairs. With its stripes and fuzz, it looks a bit like a bumblebee, and that helps keep hungry birds away.

Lives in
Most of Europe and across Asia, on flowers in forest meadows and clearings
Length
0.9 to 1.2 cm (0.35 to 0.47 in)
Top speed
about 0.45 km/h (0.28 mph)
On foot, estimate
Can it hurt you?
Harmless
Harmless. It only looks like a bee. It cannot sting.
What does it eat?
The grown-up beetle eats pollen from flowers like thistles, thyme and blackberry. Its grubs eat dead wood of old trees.
For real!Photo of Bee beetle
Picture by Ivar Leidus. CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

How big is it?

How long is it?

Bee beetle about 1.2 cm long (0.47 in)A grain of rice about 6 mm (0.24 in)A toy building brick about 3.2 cm (1.3 in)
as long as 2 grains of rice in a rowcould run across a dinner table in 8 seconds

How big is Bee beetle compared to YOU?

Just maths in your browser. Nothing is saved or sent anywhere.

How fast is it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

1

You can find it sitting on flowers from May to July.

2

It lives mostly in mountain forest clearings and is rare in the lowlands.

3

Females have stronger, toothed front legs for digging than males.

4

Its grubs grow up inside dead wood of leafy trees.

you asked

Most asked questions about Bee beetle

?Is the bee beetle a bee?

No. It is a beetle that only looks a bit like a bumblebee, and it cannot sting.

?What does the bee beetle eat?

Pollen from flowers. Its grubs eat dead wood.

?How big is the bee beetle?

It is about 9 to 12 millimetres long.

For bug experts

Scientific name
Trichius fasciatus
Named by
Linnaeus, 1758
Group
Beetles
Family
Scarabaeidae
Classification
Insecta > Coleoptera > Scarabaeidae
Lives on
Europe, Asia
Also known as
Eurasian bee beetle

Where the facts come from

  1. Trichius fasciatus (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
  2. Picture by Ivar Leidus. CC BY-SA 4.0, 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 hello@bugwiki.app and we will fix it.

More from the same group: Beetles

Also at home here: Forests and woods