Andrena fuscipes is a medium-sized Andrena, one of a group of five species (A. denticulata, A. fuscipes, A. nigriceps, A. simillima, A. tridentata) where the females have distinctive, triangular hind tibiae which do not incurve distally and with a strongly banded appearance to the copiously-haired abdomen. Within the group the species are all rather similar, especially the males. The silver-grey males may be found in numbers dashing over the tops of flowering heather plants.

This is a medium-sized cleptoparasitic bee which is yellow and black, although some females may be red, yellow and black. The bees can be very obvious on some heathland sites, being more readily found than their hosts (bees of the Andrena denticulata group).

A predominantly black bee; the abdomen is narrow and cylindrical, which is probably an adaptation to using small-bore beetle burrows as nest sites. The males have the final segment of the abdomen modified to form a two-pronged peg which is used to hold on inside flowers during the night or in poor weather, which gives a good method for recording the bees under such conditions.