Nomad bee - unnamed 2

A Nomad bee photographed in May 2024.

Species introduction

At a glance
Latin name: 
Nomada sp.
Family: 
Bumble and Honey Bees
Family Latin name: 
APIDAE
Category: 
Insects other

Species description

Species description

This individual was spotted and photographed in early May 2024. It's a Nomad bee, but we are unable to say which of the 34 Nomads found in this country it might be. The ever-helpful country recorder for bees confirms both these points.

With the Lathbury's Nomad Bee - a different Nomad - the sight of the reddish pile on its thorax enabled the recorder to confirm species identity. But without something diagnostic like that, one can only identify down to the level of genus or family. This is likely to be a common theme when dealing with solitary bees.

Other Nomad bees that have been spotted in the cemetery but which we cannot identify to species level will be listed here if we believe each to be sufficiently different from any of the others.

Species photographs

Larger photograph(s) (click to magnify)
A Nomad bee photographed in May 2024.

Details

Species family information

Nomad bees are a genus of small, relatively hairless bees that often resemble small wasps. They are between 4 and 9 millimetres in length. All Nomad bees steal from other species of bees. Females enter the host's nest burrow to lay eggs before any cells have been sealed up. When its grub hatches from the egg, it will devour the host egg or grub with its large jaws before feeding on the food store that the host parent had provisioned the cells with.

There are 34 species of British Nomad bees. Differentiating one from another requires considerable magnification - and knowledge.

The Nomada genus of bees belong to the Apidiae family, which are commonly known as Bumble and Honey Bees.

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!