Ivy Bee

The Ivy Bee is a mining bee, meaning that it is ground-nesting. They tend to be solitary, building underground nests.

Species introduction

At a glance
Latin name: 
Colletes hederae
Family: 
Plasterer bees
Family Latin name: 
COLLETIDAE
Category: 
Insects other

Species description

Species description

The Ivy Bee is a mining bee, meaning that it is ground-nesting. They tend to be solitary, building underground nests that are lined with a secretion that resembles cellophane.

The thorax of this bee is covered with dense orange-brown hair, and the abdominal bands are an unmistakeable buff colour, paler than most other bees. Females are slightly larger than males.

The Ivy Bee is the last solitary bee to emerge each year and is Britain's only true autumn bee. Males appear in late August, and females a few weeks later, in mid-September. They are most abundant when Common Ivy blossoms in October in the south of England, but are new arrivals in Britain, first recorded in Dorset in 2001.

Species photographs

Larger photograph(s) (click to magnify)

Details

Species family information

Plasterer bees (Colletidae) are bees that use secretions from their mouthparts to smooth the walls of their nest cells. They are also known collectively as Polyester, Cellophane or Masked bees and number in the region of 2,500 different species worldwide. They collect pollen and feed on nectar. The majority of this family's species live in South America and Australia.

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!