With distinguishing blue bands across its black abdomen, the Blue-banded Bee has distinctive darting, hovering moving patterns. Found across Australia, except Tasmania, this bee enjoys a range of environments from urban settings to forests, woodlands and heaths.

The Blue-banded Bee builds a solitary nest, but usually close to one another. It prefers soft sandstone to burrow in, and areas of this type of rock can become riddled with bee tunnels. It also likes mud-brick houses and often burrows into the mortar in old buildings.

Blue-banded Bees can perform a special type of pollination called ‘buzz pollination’. Some flowers hide their pollen inside tiny capsules, and a Blue-banded Bee can grasp a flower of this type and shiver their flight muscles, causing the pollen to shoot out of the capsule. The Blue-banded Bee can then collect the pollen for its nest and carry it from plant to plant, pollinating the flowers.

Interesting Fact

It is commonly believed that the Blue-banded Bee only visits blue and purple flowers. Whilst this is in fact not true, the bee is commonly attracted to blue objects and does like lavender.