Great banded furrow bee

How to recognise it

Large for a sweat bee at 12-15 mm, with broad, crisp, pale hair bands across a dark abdomen and a distinctly gingery thorax in the female. Males are slimmer with very long antennae and a yellow-marked face.

• Large for a sweat bee, with bold pale abdominal bands.
• Gingery thorax in the female; long-antennaed males with yellow faces.
• On composites — knapweed, scabious, chicory, thistles — from June to September.
• In Britain, southern and expanding; a new arrival rather than a long resident.

Body length 12–15 mm (typically 13 mm).

Biology

Social organisation

Primitively eusocial

Social behaviour without the sharp physical caste separation of honey bees — the queen looks much like her workers. Some sweat bees.

Colony size at peak

2–12 individuals

Colony lifespan

One season where social at all.

Winter

Mated females overwinter in the natal burrow or in soil, and found or refound nests in spring.

Castes

Foundress, Daughters that may forage rather than disperse

Nesting

Burrows in the ground

Digs burrows in firm bare or sparsely vegetated soil, often on banks and paths and frequently in aggregations. Nests may be solitary or contain several females, with one laying and the others foraging — the same socially flexible pattern seen across the family.

Carries pollen

Scopa — dense hairs on the hind leg

On the wing

April to September

Lifecycle

1. 1Spring foundationAn overwintered mated female founds a burrow and provisions the first cells alone.April to May.
2. 2First broodDaughters may remain and forage for their mother rather than dispersing, producing a small colony — or may leave and nest independently.June onwards.
3. 3Reproductive broodMales and new females produced in late summer; mated females overwinter.

Where it lives and what it does

Habitat

Brownfield land, road verges, dry grassland, gardens and coastal banks — anywhere with bare firm soil and abundant composites.

Distribution

Southern and central Europe, expanding north. First recorded in Britain in 2002 and now established across the southeast.

Behaviour

Conspicuous, fast and strongly associated with composites. Its social flexibility is the interesting part: the same species produces solitary nests and small colonies depending on conditions, which is exactly the variability that makes the halictids so useful for studying how sociality evolves.

Pollination role

An effective generalist pollinator of composites and a significant one where it is abundant.

High on composites, and increasing in significance as it expands.

What it forages on

Composites strongly favoured — knapweed, scabious, chicory, thistles and hawkbits.

Honey

Produces no honey

None. Even where social, stores are consumed by the current brood.

Relationship with people

How people interact with it

A recent arrival being tracked through public records, and one of the easier scarce bees for a beginner to recognise because of its size and banding.

Conservation

Expanding and not of conservation concern. Its spread is generally attributed to warming.