Hairy-footed flower bee

How to recognise it

Stocky and densely furry, about honey bee size but flying far faster. Females are jet black with contrasting bright orange hair on the hind legs; males are gingery-brown with pale facial markings and conspicuous long feathery hairs on the middle legs, which give the species its name.

• Extremely fast darting flight punctuated by precise hovering — no bumblebee flies like this.
• A long tongue held out straight in flight, often visible while the bee hovers.
• Females entirely black with orange leg brushes; males gingery with feathered middle legs.
• On lungwort, comfrey and dead-nettle in March and April.

Body length 13–16 mm (typically 14 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; Tunnels excavated in wood

Excavates burrows in vertical or near-vertical surfaces — earth banks, cob walls and the soft lime mortar of old buildings — often building a small mud chimney or turret around the entrance. Nesting is frequently in dense aggregations, and old walls are used for decades.

Carries pollen

Scopa — dense hairs on the hind leg

On the wing

February to June

Lifecycle

1. 1Very early emergenceMales emerge in late February or early March, ahead of the females, and immediately establish patrols over patches of lungwort and comfrey.February to March.
2. 2NestingFemales provision cells through spring, working extremely fast — this is one of the quickest foragers among solitary bees.
3. 3OverwinteringLarvae develop over summer and overwinter as adults in the cell, emerging the following spring.Roughly ten months.

Where it lives and what it does

Habitat

Gardens, old walls, earth banks, coastal cliffs and quarries. Historic buildings with lime mortar are among its most important urban habitats.

Distribution

Across Europe, North Africa and into Asia, and introduced to parts of the eastern United States.

Behaviour

The flight is unmistakable: fast, darting, and punctuated by precise hovering in front of a flower with the tongue extended. Males hold territories over lungwort patches and chase rivals — and passing bumblebees, and occasionally people — with great determination and no capacity to do anything about it.

Pollination role

An important early pollinator of deep spring flowers — lungwort, comfrey, dead-nettle, rosemary, primrose — where its long tongue lets it feed legitimately rather than rob. It flies in cooler weather than honey bees and starts weeks earlier.

High, and concentrated on deep-flowered spring plants that few other bees can use at that date.

What it forages on

Strongly favours deep tubular spring flowers, particularly the borage and mint families.

Honey

Produces no honey

None. Solitary, one provision per cell.

Relationship with people

How people interact with it

Frequently reported as a problem when it nests in the soft mortar of old buildings, and it is not the cause of the damage — it occupies erosion that has already happened. Repointing with hard cement mortar destroys the nests and, over time, the wall as well.

Conservation

Widespread and locally declining with the loss of soft-mortar walls and warm earth banks. The replacement of lime mortar with cement across historic towns has removed a great deal of nesting habitat.