Talk:Megachilidae

message: That doesnt look correct (as stated re Anthidium maculatum).
Goertz 19:39, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I tend to forget when I write articles that everything is relative to one's perception, and I'm familiar with all of the world's bee species; large males are relatively common in Megachilidae (they're almost unknown in other bee families aside from Apis), just not in the more well-known groups like the genus Megachile - a lot of Anthidiines (which account for a fair number of species) have the males larger than females. Maybe not dramatically so, as in A. manicatum but larger, nonetheless. "Common" just means that it is somewhere between "uncommon" and "more than half". Maybe I'll need to simply choose a different phrasing to avoid confusion. Dyanega 21:09, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Male Megachilidae commonly larger than females?

message: Note that the link on Fidelia gets redirected to some page about a group of plants, not bees
TheBFG (talk) 17:25, 4 July 2015 (UTC)
replies: text:  OK, I've made it a dab page; now all we need is an article on the genus... Chiswick Chap (talk) 17:37, 4 July 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fidelia 

message: To add to article: do they produce honey? 173.89.236.187 (talk) 23:50, 6 January 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  To add to article 

message: The section on diversity has been expanded from one paragraph to seven.  It might be that some of the addition should be shifted to a new section on artificial nesting or cultivation or pollination services.  And more can be said about diversity, but the old version was clearly inadequate.
I have made a few other changes as well.  I'd like to add a couple of photos, but on that I need advice.
GeeBee60 (talk) 00:21, 30 September 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Diversity 

message: I just noticed that leafcutter bee is a redirect to this page, which in turn has the lede sentence "Megachilid genera are most commonly known as mason bees and leafcutter bees leafcutter bees, reflecting the materials from which they build their nest cells (soil or leaves, respectively)"
Does "leafcutter bee" refer to Megachilidae? Megachile? Or does it refer to any bee which builds nests from leaves and doesn't necessarily correspond to a taxonomic clade?
Umimmak (talk) 00:09, 26 November 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: leaf cutter bee is a vernacular name that is applied to various members of the family Megachilidae, most often (but not always) in the genus Megachile.  Thats the problem with vernacular names, there is absolutely no regulation on how they are applied.--Kevmin § 03:00, 26 November 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Perhaps the way it is right now is the best way to do it; I was just confused to see a redirect correspond to term which suggests an alternate name for the family, but then have it link to a genus making it seem like it's an alternate name just for the type genus. And it's definitely not clear that other genera  aside from Megachile are included in this "folk taxon". Is it worth having a separate page for the term "leafcutter bee", disambiguation or otherwise (maybe discussing how they build nests, what sort of plants they use, their ecological niche etc) since leafcutter bee and Megachilidae don't refer to the same thing? Or maybe the way it is now is the best way and I'm just overthinking it. Umimmak (talk) 10:57, 26 November 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  What is a leafcutter bee?