Grey-patched Mining Bee

This large mining bee has distinctive foxy-brown hair on its thorax and luxuriant black and silver hair on its legs. This individual is a male.

Species introduction

At a glance
Latin name: 
Andrena nitida
Family: 
Mining bees
Family Latin name: 
ANDRENIDAE
Category: 
Insects other

Species description

Species description

This large mining bee has distinctive foxy-brown hair on its thorax and luxuriant black and silver hair on its legs. It is found fairly frequently in southern Britain, although it has not been spotted in the Cemetery before. It nests in turf and lawns that have short to medium-length grasses and has one brood a year between April to June. Andrena nitida derives much but not all of its food from Dandelions. 

[Although the Bees, Wasps & Ants Recording Society (BWARS) does not recognize the English common name for this species, it is used by Steven Falk in his Field Guide to the Bees of Britain and Ireland, so we have adopted that usage here.]

Species photographs

Larger photograph(s) (click to magnify)
This large mining bee has distinctive foxy-brown hair on its thorax and luxuriant black and silver hair on its legs. This individual is a male.
This large mining bee has distinctive foxy-brown hair on its thorax and luxuriant black and silver hair on its legs.
Andrena nitida nests in short to medium-length grasses.

Details

Species family information

Mining bees are solitary, ground-nesting bees that have been on earth for more than 30 million years. The Andrenidae family consists of around1,300 species.

Category information

Insects evolved in the Ordovician from a crustacean ancestral lineage as terrestrial invertebrates with six legs (the Hexapoda). This was the time when terrestrial plants first appeared. In the Devonian some insects developed wings and flight, the first animals to do so. An early flying group was the Odonata from the Carboniferous, the damselflies and dragonflies, which have densely-veined wings and long, ten-segmented bodies. They are day-flying carnivores, with an aquatic larval stage, so are commonly seen flying near water. The carnivorous larvae are called nymphs. Odonata species are short-lived, damselflies surviving for 2-4 weeks, dragonflies for up to 2 months.

Some insect groups in the Cretaceous co-evolved with the flowering plants, and they have had a close association ever since. These groups are the Hymenoptera (bees, wasps, and ants), the Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths), the Diptera (flies), and the Coleoptera (beetles). The diversity of beetles is astonishing. Of all the known animal species on the planet, one in five is a beetle!