Species of the Month: October 2024
Ivy Bee Colletes hederae
During 2024, our 20th anniversary year, we are revisiting our Species of the Month archive to reshare some of our "greatest hits" through the years. This month we are looking back to September 2018, and the-then recent arrival Ivy Bee. Records in the SEWBReC area have increased from 124 to 380 but there are sure to be many more locations going unrecorded. It would be particularly good to find records in the remaining empty 10km squares in our area: SN80, SN90, SS99 and SO10.
View the 10km distribution here.
View the 1km distribution here.
First discovered in the UK in 2001, Ivy Bee is a mining bee which is relatively new to science, having been described in 1993. The species is now found throughout southern Britain (throughout England and Wales in 2024). Similar in size to a honey bee but with a more furry thorax, the abdomen of fresh individuals has an orange hue. The species feeds almost exclusively on the pollen of Ivy flowers (shown right), and forms colonies in suitable habitat such as soft sand / mud banks (shown below).
The species is quickly spreading throughout south Wales, but we only have 124 records in the SEWBReC database (380 in 2024). You can view the Welsh distribution of Ivy Bee on Aderyn.
More information about Ivy Bee is available from the Bumblebee Conservation Trust and NatureSpot.
If you spot Ivy Bees during September (or at any other time of year), please send us the record, ideally via SEWBReCORD or the LERC Wales App. Instructions on how to submit records are available here.