Hairy-Footed Flower Bees

With the plethora of Pulmonaria in the garden comes the arrival of the hairy-footed flower bee! Anthophora plumipies I even love its Latin name. The females with their jet-black bodies look remarkably like a black hover fly except for their bright orange pollen brushes. In fact I would say that there are many more females visiting the garden than their male counterparts.

The males look very different, being golden brown with a yellow face. He is much hairier with fans of long bristles on his middle legs.

As for sketching them, well they dart about a lot, but do visit many flowers in close proximity. The pulmonaria is plentiful & has seeded itself very close together, so the bees weren’t travelling too far most of the time, which gave me a fighting chance. I really wanted to show the colour dimorphism between the sexes. There was no way I would be able to get watercolour down quickly enough, so I opted for my cheap oil pastels instead.

The results are rather splodged but I think they are fairly recognisable. It’s good to have a challenge now & then.