Anthophora plumipes. More Hairy Footing in the Spring Garden.

I am revisiting the delightful Hairy Footed Flower Bee, Anthophora plumipes which I drew before back in November here. I wrote quite a bit about these funny little bees then and so won’t repeat myself, but here from the Natural History Museum identification sheet is a nice short description

“Large, long-tongued species resembling a small bumblebee; body length 14-17 mm. Female has body hair entirely black, outer surface of hind leg with golden hairs; body hair of male mainly a rich brown (face bright yellow). Common in gardens where it mainly visits deep-throated flowers. Cell walls consist of a conglomeration of fine particles of soil or mortar which are probably bound together by a secretion from an abdominal gland. This bee flies, with a shrill hum, from mid March to the end of May, rarely June. It is distributed throughout much of England and Wales (especially in the south); absent Scotland and Ireland.”

My real dilemma was which one to draw, the male or the female. I drew the male before because he is the one with the bizarre and wonderful feathery feet, lovely yellow markings on the face and a Roman nose. Below is a photo of the male, you can see the feathers on his front legs.

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Male Anthophora plumipes , Photo Cosmin Manci from Shutterstock.com

The female could not be more different, they are mostly black and shaped like a little bomb. But they are really super sweet, whizzing around with their bright, ginger coloured legs.
They are early bees and so can be seen foraging on primroses, and a absolute favourite spring flower of mine, cowslips.

Here is a great photo from Brian Stones blog, The Natural Stone. In the post “Plenty in the Garden” from April 2005 a little female Anthophora is making, just as you would expect, a beeline, for the cowslips. This post also has two lovely frogs.. I do hope one day I get to paint some frogs .. Brian’s blog is full of wonderful photos and observations, I did particularly like the delightful bee flies here.

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The Anthophora bees also like lungworts,or pulmonarias which have the same long tubular shaped flowers as the cowslips, whose deeply hidden nectar is easy for these long tongued species to access.

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Beautiful pink and violet Pulmonaria, photo from “Sad” at Shutterstock here

If you would like to attract these super bees to your garden do go and read Blackbird’s post Flower Bee Garden.. April 2009 from her excellent Bugblog which I quoted from on the last post.

You will find a list of flowers that will have Hairy Footed Flower bees frolicking in your garden. What could be nicer?

 

The Painting

I just couldn’t decide between the wonderful spotted leaves of the lungworts or my favourite cowslips.

antho sketch

I left it, until I had no more time to decide and went for the cowslip flowers. The spotted leaves might just have been a bit too busy and distracting…. but I might just have to paint that little male bee again, perhaps displaying those lovely hairy feet on a nice spotted Pulmonaria leaf.

anthph sketch

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Anthophora plumipes, The Female Hairy Footed Flower Bee and Cowslip.

 

I know the scientists may shrink in horror at the description, but this bee is just “too cute” for words!!
Watercolour and Pencil on Arches HP .. size approx 7×7 inches.

Bee No 10: Australian Blue Banded Bee: Amegilla cingulata

For this project I am putting together a set of bees which hopefully will show their diversity and beauty, so variety in colour and shape and pattern is important.
There are many different species from all around the world and as you would expect Australia has some unusual native bees.
This is the very beautiful Blue Banded Bee which has pale iridescent blue instead of yellow stripes and digs burrows in soft sandstone or clay for their nests.

This is another solitary bee from the same family as the Hairy Footed Flower Bee from the last post.

The facts: CLASS: Insecta
ORDER: Hymenoptera, Bees, wasps, ants and sawflies.
SUPERFAMILY: Apoidea. Bees and some wasps.
FAMILY: Apidae. Bees.
TRIBE: Anthophorini
GENUS:Amegilla
SPECIES: Amegilla cingulata

This website, www.aussiebee.com is a mine of information and is one of many which does its very best to encourage the public to understand and cherish their native bees, underlining their importance in pollination.

This is another bee which performs “Buzz Pollination” (see my buzz pollination post here) and is now being seriously considered as a pollinator for commercial crops of tomatoes, eggplants and kiwifruit, as well as native plants such as Hibbertia, Senna and Solanum.

Up until now, tomato growers in Australia have had to use electronic fertilization methods and steps were being taken to import some European Bumble bees to help with the task.
However the Blue Banded Bee has proved to be very capable and a breeding programme is now being developed.

Do watch this delightful short film from Aussiebee and see the males jostling for position on top of the twig, with a lot of cross leg waving. They will gather together here to rest..if they can agree..

Where and how bees rest at night is a fascinating subject and for another post, but these bees will gather together clinging onto twigs with their jaws.
Here is a photo by Anna Tambour of a ” sleeping” blue banded bee from her post “The Sleeping Bees” which is lovely, as is her blog, Medlar Comfits here.
I particularly like this as it shows her finger nail and gives you an idea of the size of these beautiful bees.

She also includes this quote from another site. Yallaroo Wildlife

Unfortunately many gardeners have been conditioned to reach for poisons as soon as they see something with six legs and wings.”

Which is probably worth putting at the bottom of every post about bees

This bee had to show off its beautiful stripes. Also, its wings are much more transparent and lighter in colour than some others.

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Bee No 10: The Australian Blue Banded Bee, Amegilla cingulata

 

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Watercolour on Arches HP, size 3.5 inches