Mining Bee

This Mining Bee took what was, to me, a somewhat inexplicable (and persistent) interest in two yellow-foliaged conifers in our back garden as I was looking around there just before midday today. It rarely stayed still enough to photograph, but some persistence on my side eventually paid off.

I would provisionally assign it the genus Andrena - but would any of you out there with a bit more entomological knowledge and experience be willing to identify it to the species level? And whether it is a male or a female?

An online search turned up some remarkably similar images on a BugBlog page on Communal mining bees - but other sites suggested the name - Andrena carantonica - given on the BugBlog site might just be a synonym for other, actually recognised Andrena species.