On my each day stroll to the submit workplace, I cross a hedge that’s 90% ivy: this has simply come into flower, and is producing a pleasant honey-like scent. In flip, this attracts massive numbers of bees, significantly my favorite (after Honey Bees, after all!) the Ivy Bee, Colletes hederae. Barely bigger than their domesticated family members, they’ve brighter stripes on their stomach.
These are a latest addition to the UK listing, having arrived right here in 2001. Because the title suggests, their major meals plant is Ivy: since this flowers from mid-September by means of till November, Ivy Bees are late emergers – the final solitary bees to seem. Though they do not have the Honey Bee’s social construction and nest alone, their underground chambers are sometimes in massive teams.
