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| All about solitary bees in your garden - miners, masons, white-faced, wool carders and more |
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HAIRY FOOTED FLOWER BEES IN SHROPSHIRE
- SURVEY Have you seen Hairy Footed Flower Bees in your garden? Find out about Hairy Footed Flower Bees here Contact the Shropshire Bee Survey here |
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What are solitary
bees? Mention bees and most people think of the 'social bees' - swarms of honey bees, or gangs of bumblebees. In fact, the vast majority of bees are solitary, living out their lives as single bees, provisioning single nest cells, rather than working with many other bees to raise huge numbers of offspring in shared nests. Find out more here: solitary bees  Above: Red Mason Bee How do I attract solitary bees to my garden? It's pretty easy to attract solitary bees to your garden. Many species may already be present. To find out more go to the Homes for Solitary Bees page. |
Above: Andrena nigroeana on Aubretia flowers How many species of solitary bee are there? There are around 250 different species of solitary bee in Britain. A surprising number of solitary bees occur in gardens. A few simple actions can help a wide range of these wonderful creatures to survive in and around your garden. Are solitary bees interesting? You bet they are! There are mason bees, leafcutters, mining bees, white faced bees, carder bees, cuckoo bees and loads more. Many have fascinating life histories, and repay close study with hours of enjoyment watching their activities around the garden. |
What use are solitary bees? Many solitary bees are very efficient pollinators. In the USA, bees of the genus Osmia, known as orchard bees, are used for pollinating fruit trees. Find out more here: Orchard Bees. Also, a leafcutter bee is used to pollinate Alfalfa crops in North America and Australia. Find out more here: Alfalfa Bees. It's very likely that solitary bees are important for the pollination of many plants. Some species are quite specialized and have close connections with certain types of plants. Do solitary bees sting? Yes, they can, but here's the good news: Only the females sting and they have feeble stings. They will only attempt to sting you if roughly handled. Solitary bees live solitary life-styles, so they do not gang up on you in terrifying numbers. In fact they don't gang up on you at all. They hardly bother to defend their own nests! In short, they are virtually harmless. |
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Do solitary bees have any enemies? They do. There's a host of critters all trying to muscle in and take advantage of the bees' hard work. The great thing is that these are mostly pretty amazing insects too. Watch out for cuckoo wasps, cuckoo bees and ichneumon wasps, that all have amazing ways of exploiting solitary bee nests. |
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Left,
an ichneumon wasp - a kind of parasitic wasp. One of many enemies of solitary
bees. This one is busy laying its egg in the nest of a leafcutter bee. Read more about the freeloaders that live at the expense of solitary bees: Freeloaders |
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Nigel Jones |
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for its contents. This is a safe-cache copy of the original web site.
gipoco.com
is neither affiliated with the authors of this page nor responsible
for its contents. This is a safe-cache copy of the original web site.