Blue-banded bee

How to recognise it

Stocky and around honey bee size, with a furred thorax and an abdomen crossed by brilliant metallic blue bands in most Australian species, white or pale in others. The flight is fast and darting, with abrupt hovering pauses.

• Iridescent blue or white abdominal bands — nothing else in Australia looks like this.
• Very fast darting flight with sudden hovering stops.
• Audible high-pitched buzzing at flowers, quite distinct from a honey bee's tone.
• Males roost overnight clinging to a stem by their jaws, sometimes in groups.

Body length 8–15 mm (typically 11 mm).

Biology

Social organisation

Solitary

Each female builds and provisions her own nest with no workers and no caste. Most of the world's bee species.

Nesting

Burrows in the ground

Excavates burrows in soft soil, clay banks, mudbrick and the mortar of old walls, frequently in loose aggregations. Several females may nest in the same bank without sharing tunnels.

Carries pollen

Scopa — dense hairs on the hind leg

On the wing

September to April

Lifecycle

1. 1EmergenceAdults emerge in the warmer months, with several generations a year in warm regions.September to April in Australia.
2. 2Buzz provisioningFemales provision cells with pollen released by sonication, working flowers other bees cannot service.
3. 3Male roostingMales do not return to a nest; they clamp onto a stem with their mandibles overnight, sometimes in small groups on the same twig.

Where it lives and what it does

Habitat

Gardens, bushland, farmland, urban areas and glasshouses across Australia, Asia and Africa.

Distribution

Africa, Asia and Australia. In Australia they occur across the mainland and are common in cities.

Behaviour

The buzz pollination is the point. Amegilla grip the anther cone and vibrate their flight muscles at high frequency, shaking pollen loose from tubular anthers that will not release it any other way. Tomatoes, eggplants, chillies, blueberries and kiwifruit all depend on this, and honey bees are physically incapable of it.

Pollination role

Outstanding on buzz-pollinated crops and wild flora. Australian research has trialled them for glasshouse tomato pollination as an alternative to importing bumblebees, which Australia has kept out for biosecurity reasons.

Very high on buzz-pollinated plants, which very few other bees can service at all.

What it forages on

A broad generalist with a strong preference for tubular and poricidal flowers — Solanaceae, Lamiaceae and many Australian natives.

Honey

Produces no honey

None. Solitary, with provisions sized per cell and no colony to overwinter.

Relationship with people

How people interact with it

Increasingly recognised in Australia as a garden bee worth encouraging, and the subject of a substantial research effort into managed buzz pollination. Australia has never permitted bumblebee imports for glasshouse work, which is what makes this line of research necessary.

Conservation

Widespread and not threatened. Like all ground-nesting bees they depend on bare soft soil, which paving, dense turf and landscape fabric remove.