Another Native Bee

I dragged poor old Rower down to Brownhill Creek this morning on a mini-safari. He got his blip within 5 minutes, but of course I was taking a lot longer, and the sun was giving him a headache. So we came home and I staked out the front garden.

I have seen this bee zoom past a number of times, but today was the first time I have got any images of him. Of course I was doing cartwheels in my head - so excited.

This is a resin bee from the family MEGACHILIDAE. These are generally leaf cutter bees, and my little resin bee has only recently been put into that family.

I think it might be because they all collect pollen on their bellies, which is a very inefficient way of doing it. Because of that they have to work a lot harder than other bees to collect their food, visiting flowers up to 8 times more than honey bees.

I'm fairly sure that they are visiting the echium which has hardly any flowers on it, simply because the feral honey bees are leaving it alone.

As always, I can't precisely ID this little bee. He has white spots on his thorax, and a little golden tip on the end of his tail (which you can't see in this picture). Have a look at this image in my Folio, which clearly shows the pollen on his undercarriage. (Click to the left to get straight to it).

Bigger spots