Birds
Bee-eater
Meropidae · also called bee-eaters
A bee-eater does exactly what its name promises, snatching bees and wasps out of mid-air with real precision, then rubbing each one against a branch until the stinger is disabled and the venom squeezed out, a routine performed reliably enough to make dangerous prey into a safe, specialised diet.
Overview
Bee-eaters, family Meropidae, are brightly coloured, acrobatic insectivores of open habitat across Europe, Africa, and Asia. A long, curved bill snatches flying insects, especially bees and wasps, from the air, and many species nest colonially in burrows dug into sandy banks or cliffs.
Disarming a sting, every time
The signature bee-eater behaviour, rubbing captured prey against a perch to remove the stinger and squeeze out venom, lets these birds specialise on prey most insectivores avoid. Some species also practise cooperative breeding, with helper birds assisting a pair in raising young.
Status
Least Concern — widespread and common across open Old World habitat, secure as long as suitable nesting banks remain available.
Bee-eater: common questions
How does a bee-eater avoid being stung while catching bees?
After snatching a bee or wasp out of the air, a bee-eater returns to a perch and rubs the insect firmly and repeatedly against the branch, a process that squeezes venom out of the stinger and disables or removes it entirely before the bird swallows the now much safer insect. This precise handling routine, performed consistently and quickly, allows bee-eaters to specialise heavily on prey that would be genuinely risky for most other birds to eat regularly.
Why do bee-eaters nest in such large colonies?
Nesting colonially in dense groups of burrows dug into a suitable sandy bank or cliff face may offer benefits including improved predator detection through the presence of many alert neighbours, and in species that also show cooperative breeding, additional help from related or unrelated helper birds in feeding and defending chicks, both of which can improve overall breeding success compared with nesting in isolation.
Are bee-eaters found in the Americas?
No, bee-eaters, family Meropidae, are found naturally only across Europe, Africa, and Asia, and are not native to the Americas, where a different, unrelated group of birds fills a broadly similar aerial-insect-hunting ecological role. This distribution makes bee-eaters a distinctly Old World bird family.
Do bee-eaters only eat bees and wasps?
While bees and wasps make up a significant and name-giving share of the diet for many bee-eater species, they also readily catch and eat other flying insects such as dragonflies, and the exact prey mix can vary by species, season, and local insect availability, meaning bee-eaters are specialised but not entirely restricted to stinging insects alone.