Solitary Bees

I occasionally spend my lunchtimes, chewing on a sandwich in the local city park wishing I was with my solitary bees in the countryside. By way of compensation I usually head towards the flowers checking for a buzz, and then spend minutes standing in front of them looking downwards with the ageing camera out trying catch pictures of the bees that live there – frankly, from behind I think it looks a bit weird, sad and lonely to other sandwich chewers, but I persist. It comforts me.

Well today it seems the persistence has just paid off – spectacularly even.

I had been tracking some bees that had bright yellow flashes down the outer side of their abdomens. For several lunchtimes there were at least four or more gathered around a group of flowers, appearing almost like yellow jackets/wasps or common hover flies in their colouration. They were pretty fast and even aggressive to bumble bees around – I had just no idea what they were…

Finally tonight I found a video from another solitary bee enthusiast and the penny dropped. I was in fact watching and taking very blurry photos of Wool Carder bees (Anthidium manicatum); I then remembered that I had caught on video a similar bee scraping plant stems probably (I thought) for nesting materials. After Googling for videos, I realised only one six second film exists on the Web (YouTube), and I had in my possession the (soon to be) first and only filmed moment published freely on the Web of a female wool carder bee, literally in the act of what has given the species their common name!

So instead of gushing and waffling on here it is (hope you like, and please do do comment so I don’t feel too daft):

A quick update – I captured a video of a male bee nearby some days later: