Little Bee-eater

The little bee-eater (Merops pusillus) is Africa’s smallest bee-eater, measuring about 15–17 cm and weighing roughly 14–18 g. It is a compact, colourful bird with green upperparts, a broad black eye-stripe through the red eye and a narrow blue brow. The yellow throat is bordered below by a black gorget, while the breast and belly are warm orange-brown. In flight, the orange underwings show a dark trailing edge.

Little bee-eaters favour open habitats with bushes, low trees and exposed perches, often near water. They occur in savanna, woodland edges, wetland margins, farmland and other lightly wooded country.

The diet consists of small flying insects. Bees and wasps are particularly important, but beetles, flies, dragonflies and other insects are also taken. A study of breeding-season diet found that more than half of identified prey were bees, wasps and other related insects.

Little bee-eaters usually hunt from low, exposed perches. A bird spots passing prey, makes a short flight after it and commonly returns to the same or a nearby twig before swallowing the insect.

Stinging insects are handled carefully. The bird repeatedly strikes and rubs the prey against the perch before eating it, which helps discharge venom and remove or damage the sting. This characteristic handling allows bee-eaters to exploit bees and wasps that many other insect-eating birds avoid.

Little bee-eaters are usually encountered alone, in pairs or in small groups. They are less strongly colonial than many other bee-eaters and spend much of the day quietly watching from low perches between short feeding flights.

Little bee-eaters usually nest as isolated pairs rather than forming large breeding colonies. Both birds excavate a tunnel in sandy soil, often around 50–130 cm long. Nests can be dug into banks, into the roofs or sides of abandoned aardvark or other mammal burrows, and occasionally into other suitable sandy sites, including sand bunkers on golf courses.

Breeding timing varies across the range and often follows local rainfall. In southern Africa, egg-laying peaks around the end of the dry season and beginning of the rains, commonly from about September to November. A clutch usually contains two to six white eggs, incubated by both sexes for roughly 18–20 days.

In parts of southern Africa the little bee-eater is an important host of the greater honeyguide (Indicator indicator), a brood parasite that lays its eggs in the nests of other birds. Female honeyguides puncture host eggs when laying their own. If bee-eater eggs survive, the honeyguide chick hatches first and can kill the younger host chicks with specialised hooks on its bill. Long-term work in Zambia has made little bee-eaters one of the best-studied hosts for understanding this unusually violent relationship between honeyguide and host.

The little bee-eater is widespread across sub-Saharan Africa and remains listed as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List. Its enormous range keeps it well away from being considered threatened on the basis of geographic distribution, although the current population trend is considered decreasing.

Changes in insect abundance can affect the species quickly. Studies associated with insecticide-based tsetse control found that spraying could sharply reduce day-flying insects and feeding rates, and one severe short-term food shortage was followed by breeding failure at several nests. Local insect loss and heavy pesticide use can therefore reduce food availability and breeding success in a bird that catches its prey in the air.