Amegilla cingulata

Females are about 14 mm long with a 9 mm forewing; males are about 13 mm long with an 8 mm forewing.

Both sexes are easy to recognise by metallic blue hair bands across the abdomen and orange hair on the top of the thorax.

The thoracic hair, especially in females, is consistently bright orange, and the blue abdominal bands are seldom tinged with orange.

This bee lives along the east coast of New South Wales and Queensland in eastern Australia.

Adults are solitary, flying, nectar-feeding bees according to the Australian Faunal Directory.

Females nest in groups, digging their burrows in decomposing sandstone.

An old museum specimen now treated as this species was labelled as taken from a tunnelled cell in the plaster wall of an old house.

Some blue-banded bee species are known to nest in sand, loam or clay soils, and also in soft sandstone, clay washouts and mud bricks.

In this genus, nests are often found in large aggregations that are re-used for many generations.

Recorded flower visits include mango, tomato, and plants in the genera Hypochoeris, Ipomoea, Lantana, Persoonia and Rosa.

Blue-banded bees as a group are highly polylectic, meaning they collect pollen from many different plant families.

Like other Amegilla, it belongs to the group of buzz-pollinating bees.

It was the first Australian bee species to be scientifically described, from a specimen collected by Sir Joseph Banks and named by Fabricius in 1775.

Blue-banded bees have been proposed as suitable Australian native pollinators for crops in the tomato family.