Steve Hitchcock
Blue Banded Bee - Amegilla cingulata (10mm) Male
Blue banded bees are solitary bees. This means that each female bee mates and then builds a solitary nest by herself. She builds her nest in a shallow burrow in clay soil or sometimes in mudbricks. Many blue banded bees may build their nest burrows in the same spot, close to one another, like neighbouring houses in a village.
Blue banded bees can perform a special type of pollination called 'buzz pollination'. Some flowers hide their pollen inside tiny capsules. A blue banded bee can grasp a flower like this and shiver her flight muscles, causing the pollen to shoot out of the capsule.
Quite a few native Australian flowers require buzz pollination.
Photographed Currimundi, Queensland, Australia.
Steve Hitchcock © All rights reserved
Blue Banded Bee - Amegilla cingulata (10mm) Male
Blue banded bees are solitary bees. This means that each female bee mates and then builds a solitary nest by herself. She builds her nest in a shallow burrow in clay soil or sometimes in mudbricks. Many blue banded bees may build their nest burrows in the same spot, close to one another, like neighbouring houses in a village.
Blue banded bees can perform a special type of pollination called 'buzz pollination'. Some flowers hide their pollen inside tiny capsules. A blue banded bee can grasp a flower like this and shiver her flight muscles, causing the pollen to shoot out of the capsule.
Quite a few native Australian flowers require buzz pollination.
Photographed Currimundi, Queensland, Australia.
Steve Hitchcock © All rights reserved