Going in.....

One of the absolute delights of the warmer weather is the opportunity to take images of our blue banded bees (Amegilla cingulata). And yes they really are that colour!

The are Australian natives, solitary bees, and I love them with a passion. They are so interesting to watch.

Here's some interesting information:

The beautiful Blue Banded Bee has a furry golden thorax and iridescent blue or white stripes on a glossy black abdomen, and they grow to 11-12mm. This is a solitary bee but females may build nests together in same location. As they get older, the fur on the thorax becomes more sparse.

The males have five complete bands and females have four, and the species gets its name from the Latin word “cingulum”, meaning belt, and refers to the bee's bright abdominal bands. Blue Banded Bees have large bulging eyes have multiple lenses, and a long ‘tongue’ that enables them to extract nectar from trumpet shaped flowers like the abelia.

Blue banded bees are one of a number of Australian native bees that can perform a special type of pollination called buzz pollination. This makes them ideal pollinators of crops such as tomatoes, kiwi fruit, eggplants and chillies. The honey bee, Apis mellifera, cannot buzz-pollinate.

Blue banded bees can sting but they are very placid creatures, and will tolerate very close inspection. Attempting to catch or hold one could be another matter. Female blue banded bees build their nests underground, but males don’t build nests. They roost for the night clinging to plant stems, and are often observed sitting in a line along the same stem.

They occasionally seek nectar deep inside flowers, and then resume the search for pollen on other kinds of flowers. Like all the anthophoridae family, blue banded bees are very active foragers, and each will visit around 1200 flowers per day. They have a limited foraging range of 300 metres, and females have been observed to make at least nine foraging flights per day. Blue-banded bees actively forage between temperatures of 18 and 40°C.

Unlike honey bees, blue-banded bees are capable of hovering, which one would assume makes them easier to photograph. This couldn't be further from the truth, and taking a clear photograph of a blue banded bee in flight is reason for celebration.

Thanks for all your wonderful comments on my sky image from Second Valley yesterday. They are all much appreciated.