Cuckoo bees don’t build their own nests but lay their eggs in other bees’ nest cells. Some bees aggresively chase their cuckoos but others seem not to care. Rust and Thorp studied Stelis chlorocyanea and Osmia nigrifrons and concluded that Osmia reportedly don’t care about their parasite. If Stelis is discovered by the host inside the nest, it simply backs out and goes its way, and both species can be observed resting peacefully next to each other. Why is that?
I read the abovementioned story, which was inspiration to the cartoon, in the review paper by Jessica Litmann entitled “Under the radar: detection avoidance in brood parasitic bees”. And if you want to read more plausible hypotheses explaining the described phenomenon than this proposed on my cartoon, I strongly recommend this paper!
I didn’t manage to find good photos of neither of the species described, so the characters probably don’t resemble the bees from the original research. But I’m pretty sure that they are not the only host-cuckoo pair which lives peacefully next to each other.
