The white-footed sweat bee, Lasioglossum albipes, is a halictid bee (Hymenoptera: Halictidae) that can be found throughout the Palearctic. Females construct their nests in the ground; they collect pollen from a variety of flowers and mass provision their young by building a pollen ball upon which they deposit a single egg (Michener 1974).
L. albipes is socially polymorphic, which means that females of this species are cabable of producing either solitary or eusocial nests (Plateaux-Quenu 1993). This species is eusocial in western France but solitary in eastern France and Germany where climates are cooler and nests ... [more]