Though each female bee will build her own nest, they aggregate in large communities that give the appearance of colonies.

The genus contains bees located purely in Old World, appearing throughout Europe, Africa and Asia, with one subgenus endemic to Australia.

Additionally, Amegilla is strongly characterized by several autapomorphies, including a gonostylus, the male phallic organ, that is fused to the gonocoxite, or interior region of copulation, and a curved maxillary palpus with distinctive surrounding fringe.

Both sexes are densely furry, with the exception of their lower facial regions, which jut outwards and tend to be bare, and colored anywhere from light yellow to dark brown.

They are widespread across this region, with the northern and southernmost extremes of their mating and nesting distributions being approximately 700 kilometers apart.

[3] The female bee builds her nest by digging straight down into clay, or other densely packed soil and dirt.

[5] After remaining dormant until the following winter, the brood which had been laid the previous year emerges and begins the flight season and mating process.

This might be due to the increased fitness of late-emerging males to mate with females later in the season, given that the early-emerging competition would already have died.

One explanation for why this species engages in this behavior, despite its low level of success, is that intruding bees are attempting to find nests where the owners have died or disappeared.

This is a cost-saving mechanism by which the intruding bee can save energy which she would otherwise spend on burrowing and brood cell creation.

When an owner does happen to return, the intruder allows herself to be removed in a short and non-lethal confrontation so she might continue her search for an abandoned nest.

[10] Two distinct mating patterns arise in this bee species, due to the two size classes of males.

80% of the male population in A. dawsoni is made up of minors, despite the fact that 90% of females mate with the major bees.

[11] When a male locates a receptive female bee, he will mount her back, and ride her over to the nearest available vegetation, after which he will begin copulation, which occurs in 3 phases.

Emergent virgin A. dawsoni females release a particular mix of CHCs to indicate their receptivity to patrolling males.

Additionally, other volatile chemical agents potentially produced in the Dufour's gland have been implicated in male repulsion signaling.

One explanation that has been offered for this phenomenon in A. dawsoni is the irregular distribution of flowering resources due to the arid conditions of the Australian desert.

[13] The female bees of this species can control whether their male offspring are large (major) or small (minor).

They control this by differential provisioning – the female will invest more in terms of food and cell size for the major bees.

Alternatively, towards the end of the season, when resources are low and foraging times have increased, females produce minor males almost exclusively.

The adult female bees then enter the cells and deposit the parasitic larvae in the vicinity of their own brood.

[15] Australian wild bee ecologist Kit Prendergast has a large tattoo of two Amegilla dawsoni mating on her right shoulder.