Spring Flower Bee Anthophora plumipes
The Spring Flower Bee is also called the Hairy-footed Flower Bee.
Pictures above show the female: large and black with distinctive yellow/ginger hairs on the hind leg.
The Male Spring Flower Bee, above, looks very different - smaller with ginger body hair. He has a white face and hairy, two-tone legs.
It is a long-tongued bee which can drink from tubular flowers.
Both male and female wake from hibernation around February/March and are active until May/June.
Although called "solitary" bees, the Flower Bees will often excavate their nest holes together in groups.
Usually these will be horizontally in crumbling mortar or soft masonry. The one above is unusual in being vertical in the ground
(beside a block of flats in north London).
Mourning Bee, Melecta albifrons, female above, is a "cuckoo" bee,
a parasite, laying its eggs in nest holes of Spring Flower Bees.
The male Spring Flower Bee demonstrating its alternative name of Hairy-footed Flower Bee.