The fork-tailed flower bee

At first glance this bee might be mistaken for a small brown bumblebee.  It is furry and rounded but is zippier and much noisier than a bumblebee, with a shrill buzz as it flies.  It is a fork-tailed flower bee (Anthophora furcata).  I am not sure where its common name comes from as it doesn't have a forked tail, as far as I can see, and the BWARS website and Steven Falk's Field Guide to the Bees of Great Britain and Ireland make no mention of a forked tail.

There are lots of these in my garden at the moment - more than I can remember - but perhaps I am just more aware of them.  The male has a yellow face and is slightly smaller.  The female has an orange tip to her tail and carries pollen in a scopa (pollen brush) on each hind leg.  Both fly rapidly and noisily, like their cousin the hairy-footed flower bee (Anthophora plumipes) which I wrote about a few weeks ago.

The female excavates a nest in dead wood, of which there is plenty around here.  They mostly prefer small, long tubular flowers but mine also seem very keen on foxgloves.  This is the male on viper's bugloss.

And this is the female.

Here is a female in a foxglove, showing her orange tail and white pollen in her scopae,

another with yellow pollen,

and another on Allium christophii, carrying green pollen.

Although they fly very fast they are slightly slower as they enter and reverse out of the flowers so I had fun trying to get flight shots.  These are females, covered in white pollen.

This one is wiping her eyes with her front legs as she reverses out of the flower.

And a male.

A. furcata has a long proboscis and often flies between flowers with it extended.  In the second photo the two halves of the proboscis are separated as the bee adjusts her tongue.

On Tuesday I went for a walk in Harwood Forest in Northumberland and heard a flower bee's buzz.  I eventually tracked it down and it stopped briefly for a photo.   Like many insects, this bee is probably more widespread than was previously realised, or may be expanding its range as the climate warms.  It is one of the target species of this year's North East Bee Hunt, run by the Natural History Society of Northumbria.  I have recorded my sightings with the survey.

You can find a BWARS information sheet on A. furcata here.  These bees are very welcome in the garden and are very efficient pollinators.  With luck they will be joined here by A. plumipes in the next few years.

Update 28 06 21.  I found this on Steven Falk's Flickr page.  It is odd that it isn't mentioned in the book, given the name.  And not much use in the field.