Anthophora plumipes

The male is covered mainly in bright reddish brown hairs.

The female is entirely black-haired except for reddish orange pollen-carrying hairs on the hind legs.

In Britain it occurs through much of England and Wales, with recent records from Edinburgh in Scotland.

It is widely distributed across Eurasia, from Britain east to China and Japan and south to North Africa.

It was introduced to North America in 1980 at the USDA bee laboratory in Beltsville, Maryland, from stock originating in Europe and southern China.

In the United States it is now commonly found in early spring across the Washington D.C. metropolitan area, where it nests in the ground under porches.

There is one generation a year, flying mainly from March to late May.

Both sexes spend the winter as newly emerged adults inside their sealed cells.

It usually nests in groups in vertical soil faces such as coastal cliffs, and inland in sand pits, soft mortar joints and cob walls.

Nest sites are used year after year, so that erosion occasionally brings old cells to the surface.

It has a particular fondness for lungwort (Pulmonaria) flowers.

It is the usual host of the cuckoo bee Melecta albifrons, which lays its eggs in this bee's nests.

It can fly in cool weather by tolerating flight-muscle (thoracic) temperatures as low as 25 degrees C, which reduces the energy cost of warming up.

In Cambridgeshire it is an important pollinator of autumn-sown field beans.