Blue banded bees (Amegilla zonata) are bees that are known by their rapid movements and are often seen flying and hovering over flowers as if the bee is performing some kind of acrobatic manuever flights just like this bee that I'd seen this morning when it flies over a flower of a guava tree.
As I dig deeper, I found out that this species of bee is solitary in nature and the rapid movements they execute while flying have something to do with the way they pollinate the flowers and that is they have to
shake the flowers and the anthers by means of the vibration they produce to dislodge the pollen as their flight muscles move rapidly and the process is called buzz pollination or sonication.
To sum it up, blue banded bees, both Amegilla zonata that is native to South East Asia and Amegilla cingulata which is native to Australia that is often confused with the former are solitary bees that can sting but they are not aggressive as compared to honeybees. Males can be found on perched on plant stems at night while the females are confined in burrows on the soil or in soft stones. The flapping motion of their wings while they are flying creates a vibration that is similar to sonic boom to shaken the flowers so the pollen will be extracted from the flowers.
This will be my entry of this week's POINT OF BRAIN CHALLENGE by @friendlymoose featuring FLYING...Keep on buzzing like a bee and let's soar like an eagle!
