Ivy flowers

Ivy is one of the last plants to flower and provides a welcome resource for late season insects. The ivy in my garden is now providing nectar and pollen to a wide variety of insects.  I first noticed a lot of pollen being brought into the hives and when I went into the copse I found honey bees,

wasps,

hoverflies,

flies,

crane flies,

and ladybirds, mostly harlequins,

and one cream-spot ladybird.  Until now I didn't know that ladybirds would eat pollen.

Ivy nectar is rich in sugar, 49% w/w, and the pollen has a high level of amino acids.  The ivy will probably provide nectar and pollen until at least the end of this month.  Later the berries will be eaten by thrushes, blackcaps, wood pigeons and other birds.

Beeodiversity on viper's bugloss

If I were to choose one plant to attract bumblebees into the garden it would be viper's bugloss (Echium vulgare).  It is a native wild flower in the borage family and happily grows in gardens.  It is biennial and seeds itself around in the right conditions - in my garden the flower spikes are over 1m tall.  Unlike many flowers, Echium vulgare produces nectar throughout the day and the nectar is protected in hot or rainy weather, producing a very reliable nectar source over many weeks.

In the past three weeks I have seen 12 species of bee on the viper's bugloss, including all seven common bumblebee species.

One of my favourites and the easiest to recognise is the red-tailed bumblebee (Bombus lapidarius).  It's colours go well with the blue flowers.

The male red-tailed bumblebee has a yellow collar and a yellow moustache.

This is another easily-identified bee, a common carder bee (Bombus pascuorum).

Nearly all the bumblebees I saw were only interested in nectar but several early bumblebees (Bombus pratorum) were collecting pollen, as you can see from the blue pollen in the pollen basket on this bee's hind leg.

Although she did take a few sips of nectar as well.

The garden bumblebee (Bombus hortorum) has a very long tongue.  This one is a worker.

This is a queen buff-tailed bumblebee (Bombus terrestris).  Her short tongue is less than half the length of the tongue in a garden bumblebee.

This is a white-tailed bumblebee queen (Bombus lucorum), another short-tongued species.

The male white-tailed bumblebee has a broad yellow collar and a yellow moustache.

Buff-tailed and white-tailed workers are difficult to distinguish in the field.  This one (whichever it is) has been collecting pollen from a different flower but has stopped by for some nectar.

Bumblebees are often difficult to photograph but some are easily recognised even with their heads deep in the flowers. This is a tree bumblebee (Bombus hypnorum).

Tree bumblebees usually have an orange/brown thorax, black middle and white tail, as above, but in some the thorax is very dark.

And a bumblebee with a difference.  This is a gypsy cuckoo bumblebee (Bombus bohemicus).  It has dark wings and no pollen basket on its hind leg.  This bee moves more slowly around the flowers and drinks for longer at each one.  It has a short tongue and I see it more often on flat open flowers.

Solitary bees like viper's bugloss as well.  Here is a rather faded female red mason bee (Osmia bicornis).

And this is a very old male red mason bee.  He has lost most of his fur and all of his red colour.  I think he tried cutting his own hair during the lockdown.

A female patchwork leafcutter bee (Megachile centuncularis) visited the flowers as well.

A real treat was a visit from a male fork-tailed flower bee (Anthophora furcata).  I didn't see a female this year.

And last but not least, a honey bee (Apis mellifera).  It is interesting that honey bees are more interested in collecting pollen than nectar and spend their time on the anthers and not in the flowers.

I have also noticed a lot of blue pollen in the hives.  (If you look carefully at the cells towards the top left corner each contains a tiny honey bee egg.  The shiny cells on the right contain nectar.)

The bees tend to store pollen from different flowers separately in different cells, although it doesn't always work out that way.  In this photo you can see individual blue pollen pellets (towards bottom left and top right) which haven't yet been pressed into the rest of the pollen.

Viper's bugloss is attractive to other insects such as butterflies, which drink the nectar

and hoverflies which eat the pollen.

Viper's bugloss gets its strange name from the 16th century Doctrine of Signatures which held that herbs resembling human body parts, animals or other objects could be used to guide treatment of various ailments.  Viper's bugloss was thought to look like a snake (although I can't see the resemblance) and was recommended for treatment of adder bites. The bugloss part of its name means ox tongue and refers to the appearance of the leaves.  Echium comes from the Greek word for viper and vulgare means common.

Bad news for bumblebees

I came across this poor bee while doing my monthly bumblebee count for the Bumblebee Conservation Trust.  It is a newly emerged queen red-tailed bumblebee (Bombus lapidarius).  It was crawling around in the hedgerow, unable to fly.  The reason is obvious as it has no wings, just shrivelled stumps where they should be.

The appearances are very similar to those we see in honey bees affected by deformed wing virus (DWV).  This is the major cause of disease in honey bees and is transmitted by the varroa mite (Varroa destructor).  This photo shows an affected worker honey bee (Apis mellifera) with a varroa mite on its thorax.

DWV is endemic in honey bees but is present in much higher levels in the presence of Varroa infestation.  It is also found in bumblebees.  In 2006 Genersch et al reported wing deformities in Bombus pascuorum and Bombus terrestris affected by DWV.  More recently Fürst et al found DWV to be present in 11% of British bumblebees, with evidence of virus replication in one third of those, suggesting active infection.  Little is known about the prevalence of wing deformities in bumblebees.  They cannot fly and presumably die quickly so they will not be detected by standard surveillance methods.  Bumblebees are not affected by Varroa but they share flowers with honey bees and may well acquire the infection that way.  Most responsible beekeepers treat their bees to help control varroa infections, and thus reduce the levels of DWV, but there is little or nothing that can be done to prevent infection of bumblebees.  I suspect nothing at all is known about wing deformities or DWV infection in solitary bees, although a similar deformity has recently been observed in a Colletes bee.


Fürst MA, McMahon DP, Osborne JL, Paxton RJ, Brown MJF. Disease associations between honeybees and bumblebees as a threat to wild pollinators. Nature. 2014;506(7488):364-366. doi:10.1038/nature 12977.  available here.

Genersch E, Yue C, Fries I, Miranda, J. (2006). Detection of Deformed Wing Virus, a honey bee viral pathogen, in bumble bees (Bombus terrestris and Bombus pascuorum) with wing deformities. Journal of Invertebrate Pathology. 91. 61-3. 10.1016/j.jip.2005.10.002.

End of year favourites - Bees

Bees continue to fascinate me - honey bees, bumblebees and perhaps solitary bees most of all.  Although the weather in the spring and early summer was poor I have seen more species than ever in the garden but others out and about as well.  Here are a few favourites from the past year.

A queen red-tailed bumblebee (Bombus lapidarius).

Male hairy-footed flower bees (Anthophora plumipes).

A bilberry mining bee (Andrena lapponica).

A queen early bumblebee (Bombus pratorum).

A male Willoughby's leafcutter bee (Megachile willughbiella).

A female red mason bee (Osmia bicornis) returning to her nest with a mouthful of mud.

A female tawny mining bee (Andrena fulva).

A queen honey bee (Apis mellifera) and her attendant workers.

A female ashy mining bee (Andrena cineraria).

A male fork-tailed flower bee (Anthophora furcata).

A female yellow-faced bee (Hylaeus spp.) swallowing pollen.

Hopes for next year include photos of a leaf-cutter cutting leaves, a leaf-cutter returning to the nest with cut leaves, a mason bee collecting mud, a honey bee collecting propolis, and a bilberry bumblebee (Bombus montana).  Perhaps even an ivy bee (Andrena hederae).