All in all it's just another bee in the wall

I made another trip to the Ox Hovel in Nether Heyford, Northants on a sunny but frosty early morning.  The bees were warming up before setting off for the day and the two old boys in the photo above are faded male hairy-footed flower bees (Anthophora plumipes).  All the females will have mated by now so there is nothing for these two to do in the remainder of their short lives except sip nectar and sit in the sun.  When I first saw them one was asleep on his back.

Most of the Anthophora bees I saw were females.  They were also waiting to warm up so I had the unusual opportunity of photographing them at rest (normally they whizz in and out too fast for me to focus).

Also warming up were several cuckoo bees, Melecta albifrons, the cleptoparasite of Anthophora plumipes.

I saw a few female red mason bees (Osmia bicornis).  The photos show well the two horns on the face used for building the mud walls between the cells in the nest hole.

Because I was expecting solitary bees this bee puzzled me for a moment.  It is a tree bumblebee (Bombus hypnorum) so they also have a nest in the wall.

I posted a few Anthophora plumipes photos on the UK Bees, Wasps and Ants Facebook page recently and this lead to an amusing exchange, which went along the lines of:

We don't need no pollination,
We don't need no swarm control,
No dark Melecta in the mortar,
Keeper leave them bees alone,
Hey, Keeper, leave them bees alone,
All in all it's just another bee in the wall.

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