Female leaf-cutter bees are choosy about their sexual
partners: they only fall for males who give off the appropriate smell.
Zoologists at the University of Bonn have discovered that the male bees
actually have to rub their scent under their partners’ noses. Glands in their
front legs serve as “scent sprays”.
There is not much room for sensuality in the sex act of the
leaf-cutter bees. The male throws himself on the female, gets a firm hold on
her feelers with his jaws, keeps her eyes shut with his forelegs, presses her
wings against her body with his middle pair of legs and forces her abdomen
upwards. “But the lady bee alone decides who she would like to mate with,”
Professor Dieter Wittmann explains, “if she doesn’t want her suitor, she bucks
and throws him off – and sometimes even shows him who’s boss with her sting.”