One of the joys of spending time outdoors in the warmer weather is spotting the insects also making the most of the sunshine, buzzing between the flowers, stocking up on nectar and pollen. If you look closely, you may find that many of these flying insects are solitary bees.
What is a solitary bee? Well, there are around 280 different species of bee native to the UK, and about 250 of them are solitary. Unlike the honey bee and bumble bees, which live in colonies with a queen and workers, solitary bees nest on their own.
Let’s meet a few of them:
Mining bees (genus Andrena)
Mining bees are the largest group of solitary bees, with 65 different species. As the name suggests, the female lays her eggs in tunnels she burrows in the ground. If you walk along a sandy path and look down at the ground, you may see little round holes surrounded by fine piles of soil. If you watch patiently, you might be lucky enough to spot a female mining bee flying in and out of the hole, depositing pollen for the eggs she has laid.
Cuckoo bees (e.g. Nomada)
Cuckoo bees parasitise other bees. Nomad bees lay their eggs in the nests of Mining bees and when the eggs hatch, the grubs kill their host’s larvae and eat their pollen store! Many Nomad bees are black and yellow, so look like small wasps.
Flower bees (Anthophora)
The most common Flower Bee is the Hairy Footed Flower Bee. The female is distinctive – all black with bright yellow pollen baskets on her hind legs. Males are light brown. They are one of the first bees to emerge in spring and they love white dead nettle flowers.
Leaf-cutter bees (Megachile)
Female leaf-cutter bees use their jaws to cut small sections out of leaves to construct individual egg cells in their nests. They make their nests in holes in rotting wood, or hollow plant stems. There are seven species of leaf-cutter bee in the UK. This male Willughby’s has distinctive white socks!
Mason bees (Osmia)
Mason bees often nest in crevices in walls, but will also nest in “bee hotels”. They use mud to seal off the individual egg cells.
There are also tiny bees belonging to the Lasioglossum, Halictus and Hylaeus genera, which you might mistake for a small fly. One way to tell bees from flies is that bees have a tiny waist (like wasps, their close relation) and they tend to be hairy to allow them to collect pollen to feed their young.
Flies also have larger eyes that meet, or almost meet, at the top of the head. A fly also has only one pair of wings while a bee has two pairs, but since each pair of wings is hooked together, it is not easy to spot the difference with the naked eye.
So with 280 different species of bee in the UK, there is a whole diverse world of bees out there for you to discover and enjoy!
by Stephanie Irvine, Head of Operations and Programmes