Carmine Bee-eaters (Merops nubicus & M. nubicoides) Fact Sheet: Diet & Feeding

All bee-eater species are insectivorous

• Consume a diverse diet of flying insects
  • May specialize on locusts, grasshoppers, and bees
    • Bees and bee-predators are especially common
    • Known to follow movements of locusts across flood plains of the Niger River, in Mali
  • Will exploit any plentiful flying insect
• Uncommonly eat small fish (from Fry 1984)
  • Based on observed of filmed behavior and remnants of regurgitated fish bones
• Representative diet of Zimbabwe's Beatrice colony
  • 80% honeybees
  • 15% ants, wasps, and other bees
  • 5% grasshoppers, lacewings, flies, and beetles

Regurgitate indigestible insect parts

• Parts formed into pellets, c. 2 cm (0.8 in) in size
  • Records of diet easily obtained from droppings on the ground below colonies
  • A single individual may produce 3-6 pellets per day

Feeding strategy (from Fry 1984)

• Aerial hunters
  • Foraging 50-100 m (164-328 ft) above ground for 5-10 minutes at a time
  • Northern Carmines use large mammals and birds for "beaters", riding on their backs to watch for flushed insects
    • Southern Carmines do this rarely
• Readying bees for consumption
  • Manipulate food items while perched
    • Position bee so it is held just behind the thorax
    • Smack bee's head against perch
    • Quickly change grip to hold tip of abdomen
    • Rub tail-end against perch till it and the sting is crushed or ejected
    • The head is rapped once or twice and the bee can then be swallowed
  • Behavior is learned over time, though a bee-eater raised in managed care by Fry (1984) eventually taught itself to express venom from bees prior to eating them

Southern Carmine Bee-eater (Merops nubicoides) in northwestern Botswana.

Image credit: © Tarique Sani from Flickr. Some rights reserved.

Fry (1984, 1992, 2001)
Ryan (2009)