The genus Apista was proposed by F. Smith in 1861, to contain the species Apista opalina, Sm., which was described from a single female from Ega, Brazil. So far as I know the specimen is still unique. In Dalla Torre's Catalogue the genus is placed just after Melipona, which is the reason, no doubt, why Schrottky says nothing about it in his work on the solitary bees of Brazil. Ashmead, in his tables, places it in the Andrenidæ, and I have no doubt that this is its correct position.