Orchids can be deceptive by mimicking the form of a female and her sex pheromone, thus luring male bees or wasps.

[4] After mating, the female builds a nest with urn-shaped cells made with mud, feces, and plant resin, and provisions these with nectar and pollen before laying an egg in each.

Their abdomen is black with three transverse pale yellowish bands on the anterior half, and the posterior third is reddish brown.

The large body size is thought to allow the bees to fly in cooler, rainy conditions and continue foraging.

[9] Orchid bees are considered to be key species in lowland forests because they are pollinators of specific tropical plants.

[3] Eulaema meriana is native to Panama, Colombia, Venezuela, the Guianas, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and Brazil, or most commonly the New World tropics.

The pedicel is built first and its anterior surface is what forms the back of the first brood cell, which is made of a thick layer of mud and has an average volume around 4.8mL.

[5] The cells are then covered with a thin layer of feces and lined with resin that is extended past the opening to form a collar.

[5] It was noted by Cameron and Ramirez in a study done on the nest architecture of the E. meriana that less time was required to build successive cells after the first.

Mud and feces can be found deposited on the floor of the nest, while resin is stuck onto a cavity wall near the pedicel.

[12] In more primitive species in the genus Eulaema, the orchid pollinium, a packet of pollen, adheres to the male bee as it reverses out of the flower having collected the fragrance.

Adult male bees spend much of their time filling their pouch with the volatile fragrances found at orchid flowers.

[15] They apply lipids to these fragrances, and the compounds are collected and stored in the hind tibia with movements involving their entire legs.

[16] Males showed increased wing buzzing during each perching session on a tree when they were more active during the day and when ambient temperature was higher.

During perching, the male E. meriana grabs the tree with his mandibles and extends his hind legs while sweeping his wings back and forth rapidly.

The wing buzzing could be a behavioral mechanism that helps cool the bee in tropical climates as a form of thermoregulation.

The exact role of fragrances in the mating system remains unclear, as they are not observed to use them in an obvious manner to attract females or mark their territory.

At intervals it takes off and flies a few meters away from the perch before looping back to land close to its previous spot.

They were observed to be biting the dead male’s hind tibia and scraping them with their forelegs, a behavior typically seen in their chemical harvesting.

[8] Some field observations suggest that male Eulaema meriana collect these volatile fragrances to inform potential mates that they have “good genes”.

[8] Females have large ranges in which they forage and these may contain a number of different male territories, some solitary and others in loose groups.

[18] Further research about these chemical stimuli is still needed, as the exact context in which these behaviors are evoked could depend on many environmental factors.

Large bees of the genus Eulaema are found frequently in moderately wet lowland forests of tropical America and show red, yellow, and black colors.

For example, in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua, E. meriana show a “flavescens” pattern, without red or brown, and having pale yellow or almost white bands on the terga.

[6] E. bombiformis, E. meriana, and E. seabrai form part of a Müllerian mimetic complex in the Amazon basin and are very similar and make distinguishing between them difficult.

[6] In the case of E. meriana, there appears to be no obvious ecological factor that explains why the “flavescens” pattern occurs in 3 separate areas in the Neotropical region.

Worker castes and non-reproductive females would not evolve if bees accept newcomers to the nest in order to offset costs of a small colony and risks from enemies.

[9] Some scientists propose that euglossines lack the types of colonies formed by their relatives because of both high diploid male production and genetic polymorphism.

There is still much discussion on the mechanisms that prevent inbreeding in euglossines and how chemical collections by males influences mating success or paternity.

[5] Hoplomutilla conspecta, a species of parasitoid mutillid wasp, was found in a nest, chewing at closed brood cells, but oviposition was not observed.