The female places several of its paralysed prey together with an egg in a small underground chamber, to serve as food for the wasp larvae.

[3] The European beewolf has a wide distribution in the Afrotropical and Western Palearctic zoogeographical regions from Scandinavia to South Africa.

[2] There are currently five recognised subspecies:[3] In the more northerly parts of its distribution, the European beewolf is univoltine and the flight period is between mid-July and September.

The second strategy consists of a concentrated release of nitric oxide from the beewolf egg itself once the brood cells are closed by the mother that sterilises the deposited bees by killing actively growing fungi.

[4] Niko Tinbergen made a series of carefully designed experiments demonstrating Philanthus identifies its nest by sight.

[10] This wasp was previously considered to be one of the great aculeate rarities in Britain, with colonies only in sandy habitats on the Isle of Wight and Suffolk.

It has undergone an expansion in range, with the wasp now locally common in a steadily increasing number of sites as far north as Yorkshire (2002).