Скачать или смотреть The Hairy Footed Flower Bee

The super-fast-flying 🐝 Hairy-footed flower bee. (Anthophora plumipes) or HFFB for short!

These bees are excellent pollinators of early blossoming trees, giving us all sorts of lovely fruits from cherries to apples with their pollinating powers.

The female looks like a tiny black bumblebee but is in fact a type of solitary bee. 🐝 This means she builds a nest and collects food for her offspring without the help of worker bees; and there is no queen bee.

The female excavates a burrow and lays her eggs with enough food to survive. The baby bee will never meet its parents and emerges in spring to repeat the cycle.

The smaller gingery male has long hairs on his front feet, which he uses to stroke the flighty female, in order to keep her still long enough for mating!

They like to build a nest by burrowing into clay soils, cob walls or soft cliffs.

HFFBs will nest in bee bricks made from soft clay. They are often reported inside homes in the early spring, as newly hatched bees emerging from a cocoon buried in a chimney!

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