![Amegilla atrocinta.jpg](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmZUGFLuzD1LCxQSMVipPLZmL7RSSLir3hGBknxuMbUZRz/Amegilla%20atrocinta.jpg)

These very common but impossible-to-photograph bees are sometimes referred to a "zebra bum bees" and the name is rather apt because they look a lot like honeybees, except that they have black and white stripes on their abdomens. They are very difficult to photograph because they fly very fast and they are skittish: if they are busy on a flower and you start pointing cameras at them, they always fly away. The only way to take pictures of them is with special equipment, which I don't have, so this rare moment of one resting on a haworthia flower stalk will have to do. They rather like the haworthia flowers and I suspect that the pollination that happened outside was their handiwork because I have never seen honey bees go near the haworthia flowers. I sowed some of the seeds from pods that resulted. 

While I have been watching them, I saw some rather unusual behaviour: the bee lands on the flower stalk and starts rubbing its back legs very fast and I learned that the vibration causes pollen shedding in the flowers. They are important pollinators of specific plants but they don't make honey. The pollen and nectar that they collect is for their own consumption, as well as to feed their brood. They are solitary bees and the female constructs a little burrow in clay to raise her young in while the males sleep on grass stalks at night, holding on with their mouthparts.

They can sting but they generally don't, the only way you might be stung by one of these bees is by accident, they are not aggressive.