As the winter is drawing in and the buzz of bees and other insects is sadly lacking from the soundscape of the countryside, I have put together a collection of images from throughout 2016 to remind me of warmer times!
Each photograph below is captioned with a little information about the species and the story behind it. I have learned a lot about bees and their enemies and allies this year, but it has served only to show what a vast amount more there is to learn about these vital creatures.
This bumblebee queen was one of the first I saw in 2016 – back in April she spent the night tucked up on the bud of a bluebell. This was taken in the evening after a late-afternoon rain-shower which presumably drove her to cover. She was still there first thing the following morning, but soon took to the wing again after the sun hit the flowers.Blackthorn is one of those quintessential spring flowers and a local patch made a great lunchtime walk to look for early mining bees – in both the general and the specific sense as this little bee is actually called the Early Mining Bee – latin name Andrena haemorrhoa.This foxy little creature is another of the mining bees to appear early in the spring – this one is the Tawny Mining Bee – latin name Andrena fulva. This is quite an easy species to identify and one of the first solitary bee species I was able to ID with confidence.The nomad bees are a group of solitary bee species which parasitise the nests of other bees by laying their eggs in them – a behaviour known as cleptoparasitism. They are quite wasp-like in appearance and can often be found hanging around nesting burrows of the mining bees waiting for their opportunity. This one was taken at Treswell Wood, a Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust reserve but I’m unfortunately able to identify it beyond Nomada sp.Like the nomad bees, this bumblebee seeks to use the nests of other bees to rear its young – however its tactics are a little more brutal. The dark wings and the lack of a pollen basket on the hind leg identified this as a cuckoo bee – this species mimics its host and then takes over the nest, killing the queen and establishing itself as the new queen. The workers then work to raise a new generation of cuckoo bees. There are several species of cuckoo bumblebee – this one is Bombus rupestris, the Hill Cuckoo Bee.We have red mason bees – Osmia rufa – nesting in the ‘bee hotel’ in our garden each year, but more exciting still is the ‘mud mine’ I found down at the local river Witham in Grantham. The mason bees have used this same spot for at least the last two years, arriving in good numbers to gather materials which they use to create mud-wall partitions between nest cells, and then to cap off the nest tube when they’ve finished. There is extensive evidence of their workings as many bees are taking material from here. Here you can see a mason bee with a rolled ball of mud clutched in its mandibles, ready to fly back to its nest site.This is another species of mason bee which I spotted in our garden for the first time this year – the much smaller blue mason bee – Osmia caerulescens. This bee spent a good period of time on our garden table in the sunshine, occasionally making short excursions to check out gaps in the construction, perhaps with a view to finding a nest site. Like the red mason bee, this species nests in holes such as dead wood and plant stems.This one is not a bee but one of their ‘enemies’ – an ichneumon wasp called Ephialtes manifestator. The wasp paid a visit to our bee hotel and used its long ovipositor to lay its eggs within the sealed nesting tubes within. Creating habitat for the bees will inevitably bring in the other members of the ecosystem which has developed alongside these species and the range of parasites which exploit bees is extensive!This tiny little bee is a harebell carpenter bee – Chelostoma campanularum. This species uses a range of native members of the harebell or campanula family, but they seemed quite excited by the ornamental campanula in our garden!The leafcutter bees are so named because they snip circles of leaves to create the nest cells – using it as a material in a similar way to the mud walls used by the red mason bees. They were often to be found foraging on the ornamental flowers in the garden, and can be quite aggressive to other bees, even nipping bumblebees with their leaf-cutting mandibles when they try to share their flower!I spend a fair few summer lunchtimes watching this colony of wool carder bees – latin name Anthidium manicatum – at the local park in Grantham. The females use the ‘wool’ shaved from plant leaves as a material for their nest tubes and furry plants like lamb’s ear are perfect for them. They also feed from the flowers of this species and so a patch of lamb’s ear is a great place for a male wool carder to hang out and wait for females to turn up. The larger males would patrol the flowers, resting occasionally on a leaf, and mate with any females who turned up. They would also aggressively chase away any other bees who strayed into their patch – larger bumblebees included – often physically grappling them off the flowers.I’m going to sneak these two in even though they are not bees but rather bee mimics. They are two different variants of the same hoverfly species – Volucella bombylans. The ‘bombylans‘ in the species name refers to the genus of the bumblebee ‘bombus‘. The variant on the left is mimicking the white-tailed bumblebee whilst the individual on the right is mimicking a red-tailed bumblebee. Both of these variants were photographed on the same shrub during a site survey in Cambridgeshire this summer.Different bees have different preferences for flowers based on their physiological characteristics – for example bees with a long tongue will use deep flowers whose nectar is further back as this is a resource unavailable to shorter tongues species (unless they snip the ends to steal the nectar but this is another matter!) The preference for flowers can also change throughout the day or the season to reflect the relative provision of different flowers which may produce more nectar at a particular time. I watched this common carder bumblebee – Bombus pascuorum – moving between different members of the pea family along the Grantham canal including meadow vetchling, tufted vetch and common vetch. It would pass by other flowers, always seeking this same family and often showing me flowers I had not spotted within the undergrowth!One final ‘enemy’ of the bees for this collection – I spotted this unusual looking fly skulking around on the scabious flowers in the garden where numerous bumblebee workers were foraging. It seemed to have sought out the most favourable species for these bumblebees and was waiting to attack its victim. This is a species called Sicus ferrugineus and has a particularly distasteful strategy – it lays its eggs into the bumblebee where the eggs develop, pupate and overwinter in their victim.I was rather taken with these little heather colletes bees – Colletes succinctus – this year. We came across them whilst walking in the peak district in September when the heather was in full flower. After spotting them foraging as we walked, we began to come across aggregations of holes in the sandy soil of the paths which were the nest holes of this species and a little patience allowed us to watch them coming and going. They appear late in the season, to coincide with the vast abundance of heather flowers in these habitats.A September walk in Slad revealed these little Lassioglossum sp. bees on many of the grassland flowers – scabious seemed a favoured food source but they were also using ragwort and others. They are such characterful little bees especially when you catch them face-on with their long antennae.Into November, the queen bumblebees began to appear again. These queens will overwinter to set up next year’s nests in the springtime. The density of flowers in the wider countryside decreases significantly as the season turns to winter, but ornamental species such as these naturalised Michealmas daisy can be an excellent late-season nectar source for queen bumblebees, especially on a sunny afternoon.Perhaps my favourite bee photo of 2016 – this bumblebee feeding on Verbena in my parents’ garden during their Open Garden event this year.
Grantham Ecology 
Very beautiful photographs!