Heriades truncorum

Heriades truncorum is a solitary bee in the Megachilidae family, not a colony-forming honeybee. Each female builds and provisions her own nest instead of living in a hive.

It uses pre-existing cavities such as hollow plant stems, insect holes in dead wood, and old beetle borings. Its brood cells are arranged in a line inside the narrow cavity.

The female uses resin to divide the nest into cells and to make the final entrance plug. Resin may come from conifers or broad-leaved trees, and the plug can sometimes include small plant or soil particles.

It is known as the large-headed resin bee and, in some references, the ridge-saddled carpenter bee. The species was formally described by Linnaeus in 1758, and its resin-sealed linear nests are a useful identification clue.