More sleeping bees

We have looked at sleeping bees before in this blog. Here we have examples of single sleeping bees of the family Apidae. This is the genus Amegilla. They were found in wet mixed woodland near Mt Molloy, Queensland.

At sundown you can hear the buzzing of these bees as they examine suitable sites for the night's rest. Once they find a a grass stem that is acceptable, they grasp it with the mandibles and hold on until the morning sun gets them going.

It appeared that two different species had the same behavioural habit at this locality.
A blue-banded apid, Thyreus sp., was found sleeping on grass stems but it was much less common than the white and black banded species. As pointed out by Doug, this bee is a kleptoparasite of  the Amegilla above.