The Rainbow Bee-eater has vivid green, blue, and yellow plumage. It beats captured bees against a perch to remove their stings before eating them.
It has a golden crown, a black eye stripe edged in blue, a green back, a blue lower belly, and bright orange underwings.
It catches flying bees, wasps, dragonflies, and other insects, then carries them to a perch and beats them against it. Bees and wasps are rubbed against the perch to remove their stings and venom glands.
Both sexes dig a nesting tunnel in a sandy bank, incubate the eggs, and feed the young.
Females have shorter, thicker tail streamers than males. Young birds are duller green and lack the black breast band and long streamers of adults.
An extinction-risk assessment has not been added yet.