Sleeping Bee: One winter’s morning we were
wandering around the garden. On one of our shrubs we noticed a sleeping winged
insect grasping a leaf with its jaws. The insect was about one centimetre long
with a fuzzy brown thorax and blue stripes on the abdomen. We remembered
seeing a photograph of a similar insect in a book. Found the photograph in Close
to Nature by John Landy. The book describes a year observing nature in the
Snowy Mountains of northern Victoria and southern NSW. John Landy is a man of
many parts. He was a world famous Olympic athlete, is now Governor of Victoria
and is a skilled writer and photographer. He was the inspiration for the
writing of our Garden Diary.
Let’s return to the sleeping subject. It
is a Blue-banded Bee (Amegilla species). This native bee is a solitary
insect and is found throughout mainland Australia. In the country they live in
sandstone cliffs. In built-up areas they utilize soft mortar between bricks.
They have the ability to sting but are not aggressive. Blue-banded Bees are
good pollinators and will pollinate vegetables as well as many native plants.
The bee we saw was caught outside at nightfall and
slept on the plant. The jaws clamped on the leaf to prevent the insect falling
off the plant. The bee had flown away when we looked later in the day.