Family Colletidae - Colletid Bees

Colletid Bees are short tongue bees. They burrow in ground, especially in clayey soil. Some of them are hairy and some are hairless. They are solitary and build nests in ground, wood or stems.

 
Black Hairless Bee with yellow marking on thorax
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Amphylaeus sp., Subfamily Hylaeine, body length 10mm
The bee is black in colour, with yellow pattern on its thorax which is a common pattern on bees in Subfamily Hylaeine. This bee nests in stem, includes the flower stalks of the grass tree (Xanthorrhoea).
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We saw this bee once in Yimbun Park Brisbane on OCT 2007. It seems was sucking some kind of honey dew on a leaf.
Reference:
1. Native Bees of the Sydney region, a field guide - Anne Dollin, Michael Batley, Martyn Robinson & Brian Faulkner, Australian Native Bee Research Centre. P33.
  

 
Colletid Bee - ??
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? sp., body length 20mm
We took those pictures in Karawatha Forest in mid summer. There was a small sand dam to stop the rain washing the dirt to the footpath. There were quite a number of wasps digging hole there. They flying back and forwards, chasing each other, digging holes and walking in and out of the holes. They favour the small dam could be because the sand were loose there. Their body is brown in colour. On their abdomen there is the white pattern which makes their waist look narrow. Although they have a waist but which is not narrow as most of other wasps or bees.
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Later on summer 2007, we found that they feed their young with flies (Diptera), so definitely they are not bees (all bees feed their young with pollen). Then we believed they are Sand wasp. Details are explained in this page
 
 

Reference:
1. Insects of Australia, CSIRO, Division of Entomology, Melbourne University Press, 2nd Edition 1991, pp 995.
2. Insects of Australia and New Zealand - R. J. Tillyard, Angus & Robertson, Ltd, Sydney, 1926, p302.
3. Colletid sp. Colletidae - Insects of Townsville, by Graeme Cocks, 2004.
4. Native Bees of the Sydney region, a field guide - Anne Dollin, Michael Batley, Martyn Robinson & Brian Faulkner, Australian Native Bee Research Centre. P24. 

 
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Last updated: October 14, 2007.