Unfortunately I have been unable to get a picture so far.
This bee favours plants of the mint family. It is quite small but not slender, it hums very loudly (there were several working the lemon balm and it sounded like a conversation) is probably not more than half an inch, and has dark and verly light gray (or "black and white") markings on its back, on the upper segment looks somewhat like a spot.
They are very fast fliers and remove nectar as rapidly as they gather pollen. And I might add that they carry pollen sacs that are enormous for their size - as large as on the honeybee, though this is a much smaller insect.
I have tried looking online. Most bees that I have seen have black and white stripes. Or they have stripes but appear largely hairless.
Any help is welcome!
Without a photo, I can venture a few likely bee groups.
Bees in the Family Melittidae can be hairy and greyish in color with stripes, they fly fast, and can carry rather large conspicuous pollen loads on their hind legs, these loads look a lot like saddlebags. Females of some Eurcerine (long-horned) bees might also fit your description. I would also look up colletid bees and andrenid bees. Just a few likely candidate families to consider. Good hunting for your elusive little pollen-gatherer.
All the best,
Blair
Not only is a photograph necessary (though not necessarily sufficient) but we would need to know where in the world it was observed: there are an estimated 20,000 species of bees globally.
yikes.
Thanks for the answers. Unfortunately right after the bee was observed in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada, we entered a heat wave that is still with us, so I haven't been able to go out much. I didn't know there were so many bee species. According to a speech by Cory Sheffield, Ontario has 379 species - I guess that narrows it down.
Of the pictures I've seen following your suggestion, Blair, the male Mellitid bee looks somewhat like it except the bees were much fuzzier on the abdomen as well. (The upper segment, where we thought it had a sort of squarish marking, looks hairless in the image) I suppose we will have to see if they will come back when I have a camera handy.
There are different characters used for solitary bees identification. Without a clear image of the bees it could be hard to do so. But generally there are two groups of bees long and short tongue. The long tongue you could easily looks for the scopa (on the legs - abdomen). For the short tongue you can check the facial fovea, wing venation extra. Bees of family Melittidae have a specific plant hosts and I can answer for this for Egypt mostly visiting Asteraceae.
I wish for you all the best. nest time please try to take an image and be careful yo have to be as fast as bees. I have some photos on my data set.
Thank you Mohamed - I really wish I had been able to take a picture of them because they were so endearing in their behaviour - between the scurrying around the lemon balm (Melissa officinalis) and their loud humming I was thinking of tiny cats.
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