Wildlife

‘Vulture’ Bees

A group of scientists biked around Costa Rica’s tropical forests, hanging chunks of raw chicken from the trees, in April 2019. They were trying to catch a rare insect: carrion-eating bees.

Slowly, over the next five days, large bees with long, dangling legs flocked to the bait. They crawled over the folds of raw chicken, using special teeth to slice off bits of meat. They gathered the flesh in little baskets on their hind legs, where other bees collect pollen, or swallowed the meat to store in their stomachs.

The bees were preparing to carry the chicken back to their hives, where they would enclose the meat chunks in pods, leave them there for two weeks, then feed them to their babies. Scientists aren’t sure what happens inside the pods during those two weeks, or how it affects the meat. The adults don’t need to eat protein. They survive on nectar.

The bees with leg baskets still collect pollen for their babies, too. But three species — out of more than 20,000 known bee species — feed their larvae an entirely carrion-based diet. They’re called “vulture bees.”

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