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I used to see a lot of these guys when we had ferns growing around the base of our back steps.
They are Blue-banded Bees, and when the ferns died off years ago I thought I'd seen the last of them, which saddened me quite a bit. But I was very excited to see them pop up from time to time over the last 6 months or so. Obviously they didn't die off, but just moved on to another place to sleep, and just last week I noticed that there is now one coming in under our back deck to sleep on an old twiggy branch that I use for a prop for my jewellery pics, that I had hung on a hook to keep it up out of the way!
I would love to watch them as they came in to "roost" every evening because they'd put on such an entertaining show which lasted quite some minutes!
As they landed, they would grab hold of a, usually dead, branch/twig with their mandibles(?) and proceed with the strangest little "dance" as they appeared to preen and clean themselves before settling down to sleep!! Every part of their body took part in this little dance.
Once they'd settled, if another bee landed, they would start up all over again, almost like a protest at being disturbed.
Such a hoot to watch!!
I'm including a short video of this little guy I mentioned and hopefully you can see a little bit of what I mean. This is my first venture into making short videos and this one is a little blurry and not all that good. So please forgive the "if-iness" of it!
