![]() This has implications for crops which fall into these families as solitary bees, which carry out the majority of pollination in Britain, are highly effective pollinators. ![]() Many solitary bee species specialise on a family of plants with the most common pollen specialism being for those plants in the daisy and pea families. However there are still a lot of bees that specialise in collecting pollen from one genus or species (or from only a few genera or species), this is known as oligolecty. Most solitary bees are polylectic, meaning that they collect pollen from a wide variety of plant species. Finally some yellow faced bees don't have pollen collecting apparatus at all so swallow the pollen, regurgitating it when back at the nest. Some other species, such as leafcutter and mason bee species, collect pollen on specialised hairs on the underneath of their abdomen. Pollen may be moistened with nectar to allow it to stick more readily to these hairs when pollen is being actively collected by the female bee. Most solitary bees collect pollen on their legs on specialised hairs called the scopa, however these hairs do not form a basket like we find in honey bees. These cuckoos are highly specialised and co-evolved with their hosts to require the same amount of pollen, and in some cases pollen from the same species of plant, to develop and fly at the same time. This is because they often hang around the nests of their hosts and have this warning colouration to protect themselves from predators. They are often brightly coloured, resembling wasps. These cuckoo bees are often much rarer than their hosts and are highly adapted for their parasitic lifestyle. The larvae can directly kill the host larva or indirectly by eating the pollen, therefore starving the host larva to death. Either the young or the adult kills the hosts offspring and the larvae then eat the pollen in the nest. These cuckoo bees search out the nests of their hosts and lay an egg in their nests. These bees have no pollen collecting apparatus, relying on the pollen of their hosts to provide for their offspring. Not all bees collect pollen, around a quarter of British solitary bees are brood parasites or cuckoo bees. They use chewed up leaves to seal off the each section in the empty nest shells and often camouflage the shell in some way Unusually both the males and females also overwinter, hibernating in the stems.įinally there are the snail shell nesting bees, of which we have three species in Britain. This small metallic blue bee excavates out the pith of the bramble stem and nests in there. There is also one species of solitary bee in Britain, Ceratina cyanea, that excavates its own aerial nest, usually in bramble stems. These species are the ones most likely to take to artificial nests in gardens. There are also a number of species in Britain that nest in the ground but create turrets over their nests, these are often very distinctive.Ī number of species also nest aerially, usually in old beetle holes often sealing the nests with a saliva like substance, mud, chewed leaves, resin or sections of leaves which they cut with their jaws. Although most solitary bees nest solitarily, in suitable nest sites you often find aggregations of nests. She then seals off that section of the nest before moving onto the next chamber. She adds pollen to the chamber, which is often moistened with nectar, and lays an egg. She chooses a suitable piece of ground in which to nest and uses her body to dig out a nesting chamber in the ground. The majority of British species nest in the ground, excavating their own nest. Solitary bees in Britain are highly diverse, therefore so are their nesting habits.
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