Solitary Bee Hotel

You are probably familiar with bee hotels.  Many shops and companies sell them and they are basically a selection of holes of various sizes up to about 8mm in diameter, or a bunch of bamboo stems which provide ready made holes.  These are to attract solitary bees which use them for 'nesting'.  The term nesting is not entirely like the idea of somewhere to raise young and to look after them until they fledge like birds do.  In the solitary bee world, they are indeed to raise young, but the adult insect will not stick around to look after the brood.  They lay their eggs, protect them as best they can, and then die.  Basically most species use a tube-like space of some sort in which to lay their eggs, and many species use bee hotels whether that is their natural sort of hole or not.  If you buy or make a bee hotel, and why wouldn't you if you want your apple trees pollinated - you will see that they have been used when the end of the holes are blocked off with mud or some other material.

It is not just the end that is blocked up.  The female solitary bee lays an egg at the far end of the tube and then provides the egg with food - in most cases pollen.  She then seals that cell and lays another egg, leaves food, and seals off the cell.  She will carry on doing that until the tube is full.  When the eggs hatch the larva will eat the pollen, turn into a pupa (chrysalis in butterfly terms), and wait for spring when they will emerge as an adult bee to carry on the cycle.  There are more than 220 species of solitary bee in the UK and they differ in where they nest, and how they seal up the cells where the eggs are laid. Mining bees dig holes in the ground and use mud, leafcutter bees use leaves to make a tube, and then seal off the cells with leaves, mason bees use holes in mortar and use mud as seals.

Just recently I have come across two species that use fairly unusual egg-storing methods.  Firstly, one of the Pett badminton players, Jacqui, showed me photographs of a wool carder bee (Anthidium manicatum) that had been flying around foxgloves in her garden.  We have had this species in our garden for the first time this year.  The wool carder bee gets its name because it collects long hairs from plants such as the hairs inside foxglove flowers, or the hairs from the leaves of lamb's ear (Stachys byzantina), which we have also had in our garden for the first time this year. (Coincidence?! - no.)  It uses the hairs to seal off the cells, and will happily use the tubes in a bee hotel.

Wool-carder bee

Another species that I came across only recently is the fork-tailed flower bee (Anthophora furcata).  This is the only solitary bee species that digs its hole in dead or rotten wood and I took this picture of it excavating wood from the planks of a footbridge across a ditch near Toot Rock at Pett Level.  I'll cross that bridge with care in future, not because of the young bees there, but because both I and at least one solitary bee know how solid that plank is - or isn't!

Fork-tailed Flower Bee

July Moths

We have only managed to put out the moth trap once so far this month, but we had a bumper bundle when we opened it on Saturday morning.  We had more than 80 moths in total, at least 10 of which we had never recorded here before.  The full list is detailed below, with photos  of some of the more interesting ones.

* The asterisked ones are the ones we have not seen here before.  Not that they are particularly rare, it's just that we haven't been doing it that long.

All these moths have been recorded on iRecord, but as yet some haven't been verified.  I'll update the post when they are confirmed. (Updated 22 July 15)

Beautiful Hook-tip

Clouded Border

 We also had a Common Wasp and an Orange Ladybird that had been attracted by the light.

Large Emerald

Beautiful China-mark

Swallow-tailed moth

Angle Shades

Apple Ermine

Barred Straw

Beautiful China-mark * (micro)

Beautiful hook-tip*

Bird-cherry Ermine* (micro)

Blue-bordered Carpet *

Bordered Beauty*

Bright-line Brown-eye

Brimstone

Buff Arches

Buff Ermine

Clay

Clouded Border

Clouded Silver Common Emerald

Common plume moth (micro)

Common Quaker

Common Rustic

Common White Wave *

Coronet

Coxcomb Prominent

Dark Arches (more than 30!)

Dark Bordered Pearl (micro)

Dingy Footman

Dot Moth

Double-striped Tabby

Dun-bar

Elephant Hawk-moth (at least 15!)

European corn-borer (micro)

Fan-foot

Festoon

Figure of Eighty

Flame

Flame Shoulder

Toadflax  pug *

Fulvous Clothes Moth (micro)

Garden Grass-veneer (micro)

Gold Triangle (micro)

Heart & Dart

July Highflyer *

Juniper Carpet *

Large Emerald

Large Yellow Underwing

Least Carpet *

Lesser Broad-bordered Yellow Underwing

Miller

Mottled Rustic

Oak nycteoline

Poplar Grey

Privet Twist * (micro)

Riband Wave

Rosy Footman

Rush Veneer (micro)

Satin Grass-veneer (micro)

Satin Lutestring

Scalloped Oak

Scarce silver-lines

Scorched Wing

Shoulder-striped Wainscot

Silver Y

Small dusty wave

Small emerald*

Eudonia delunella (micro)

Small Magpie (micro)

Smoky wainscot

Snout

Spectacle

Spotted Magpie (micro)

Swallow-tailed moth

Sycamore

Treble Brown Spot

Triangle plume moth* (micro)

Uncertain

Vapourer

V-pug* Vine's Rustic

Waved carpet *

White Plume (micro)

White Satin

Willow beauty

Birdbath Visitor

Sometimes it's nice to sit with a book and a cup of coffee, and sometimes it's nice to look up and see what's in the garden.  And sometimes you get a surprise.  And very occasionally, whatever's out there sits there long enough for you to grab a camera, fit the right lens, and fire off a few shots.

Male Sparrowhawk, a little ruffled 

after his bath?

...and all feathers in place

Butterfly with a bow tie

When I first saw this Large Skipper butterfly, I thought that it had encountered a really small fly that had somehow attached itself to the butterfly's proboscis.  It was only when I got the photos up on a large screen that I could see that something - maybe the stamen of a flower - had got stuck on the proboscis.  Though the butterfly was clearly in some sort of discomfort - it was trying to dislodge the object with its fore-legs and also tried wiping it on the edge of a leaf - it was able to coil its proboscis and there is no reason to think that the butterfly couldn't feed normally, or even go on to produce the next generation.  An odd sight though.

I have since found out through UK Safari (www.uksafari.com), an excellent resource for identification and information, that the object on the proboscis was the pollen sac from an orchid.

Large Skipper - Ochlodes venata

A closer view showing what looks like a blob of nectar as glue