Peponapis pruinosa

Compared with honey bees, squash bees are larger and bulkier, with longer antennae and rounder faces.

Unlike honey bees of similar size, female squash bees carry their pollen dry in a brush of hairs on their hind legs.

Squash bees occur throughout much of the United States and Mexico.

It is the most widespread squash bee, found from Quebec south into Mexico wherever squashes are grown.

Squash was first domesticated in Mexico, and genetic evidence shows the squash bee spread across North America by following the human spread of its Cucurbita pollen hosts during the Holocene.

Like most North American native bees, squash bees are solitary and nest in the ground.

In North Carolina, adults are active in midsummer, from June to August.

The next generation of bees spends most of the year sealed inside those underground nest cells.

Females usually build their nest cells 6 to 12 inches (about 15 to 30 cm) underground, often right under the squash plants.

Squash bees gather pollen only from plants in the genus Cucurbita, which includes squashes, pumpkins and gourds.

Squash flowers open near dawn, and squash bees begin foraging at about the same time, before other bees are active.

In the early morning males dart between squash flowers looking for mates; by noon they are asleep inside the withered blossoms.

Only 6 to 10 squash bee visits are needed to fully pollinate a female squash flower.

Because the bees nest in the soil under squash plants, tilling a squash bed at any time of year can destroy them.