Ivy Bees (Colletes hederae) Photo by Phil Buckley

Dear Readers, you might remember that last year I mentioned that reader Phil Buckley had a garden absolutely full of nesting ivy bees, and this year they’re back! Phil describes how the lawn is positively criss-crossed with bees flying less than a centimetre above the grass, and how his poor wife hesitates before hanging out the washing because she’s afraid of stepping on them. Interestingly, they don’t seem interested in the ivy growing nearby – maybe they’re mostly males waiting for the females to emerge, and this seems more important than food? It will be interesting to see how things turn out.

The honeybees are enjoying the ivy, even so.

Honeybee and ivy flowers – Photo by Phil Buckley

And below are three short films taken by Phil of the ivy bees ‘doing their thing’. The males emerge first and hang around waiting for the females to emerge (all the bees result from eggs laid in little tunnels last year – the eggs hatch and the larvae are provisioned by ivy pollen balls that their mothers collected during last autumn). When the females do emerge, the males pile on in a most ungallant fashion. The females then go about collecting pollen to feed the next generation, while the males drift about for a few days and then die. And so the cycle begins again.

From being a real rarity in the UK, ivy bees have become one of our most notable autumn phenomena, at least in the south – they’re up there with the red deer rut and the appearance of migratory birds, at least as far as I’m concerned. Considering that it was first spotted in Dorset in 2001, and is now outnumbering honeybees in some locations, I think we can regard this species as a success story.

An interesting paper on ivy bees in Sussex suggests that this species has established itself so well because it is using an abundant and underutilised source of nectar and pollen – even though social wasps and honeybees use ivy, it’s been estimated that over half of the nectar and pollen remains uncollected by the end of the year, because so many insect species are no longer around by mid/late autumn. Plus, unlike many other solitary bees, the ivy bee is remarkably undemanding about its nest sites – the bees like short grass and patches of bare soil, don’t mind if the site is sloping or level, and, as we can see from Phil’s garden, are very at home in a domestic setting. Other bees may require a particular soil type or a particular orientation, but the ivy bee is happy in many easily available places. Keep your eyes peeled for the next few weeks – these little guys will be gone by the end of October (or earlier if the weather is too bad) and then we’ll have to wait until next September to see them again.