Post by nomad on May 8, 2016 17:12:48 GMT
Diggings and Doings in the Graveyard.
I decided this year, to have a look at different UK insects where possible. Last week I decided to see what Spring insects were in my local graveyard, which is on a slope and is large and green with a sandy soil and lies behind my house. Here on my walk among the gravestones, it seemed it was the Diptera and Hymenoptera that again held sway and I observed some intriguing things about the latter insects. When one thinks of bees, it reminds you of sunny day's when they gather the sweet flower pollen, and not a world of parasitic wasp mimics.
Beneath one Victorian Grave stone, I saw a cluster of what looked like medium wasps milling around holes along the concrete's base edge. At first I thought these were soldier wasps keeping guard but later I learned that they were Cuckoo Bees of the genus Nomada!! There are around thirty UK species and they are cleptoparasitic on Mining Bees and are Wasp mimics. The group that I was watching might have been the species Nomada flava, they use the Tawny mining bee, Andrena fulva as host. I observed one Andrena fulva sitting on a leaf near the Grave but this is at best circumstantial evidence for the suggested identification.
Nomada flava?
Nomada flava lands by its host's hole.
The female Nomada will enter the Mining Bee's nest and lay her eggs in one of this solitary Bee's chambers. Nomada larvae will kill the eggs or larvae of its host and then feed on the pollen store that the Mining Bee has prepared for its own early stages.
One of the host of Nomada Bees, Andrena fulva
It is a tough life down there in the insect world. These Cuckoo Bees will hover near their hosts holes and sometimes land to investigate often a little distance away. As one Nomada alighted, a desperate struggle ensured. The action was brief and fast and furious, the bee and its predator rolled over and over at such a speed it was hard to get a good image and see clearly what was going on. So what was happening, can you make it out? My impression is that it looks like a Bee graveyard, and holding this Nomada Bee, it does look like a spider's unusual marked red and black marked legs perhaps the predator was laying in wait inside its own hole. Remarkably the bee managed to escape.
I decided this year, to have a look at different UK insects where possible. Last week I decided to see what Spring insects were in my local graveyard, which is on a slope and is large and green with a sandy soil and lies behind my house. Here on my walk among the gravestones, it seemed it was the Diptera and Hymenoptera that again held sway and I observed some intriguing things about the latter insects. When one thinks of bees, it reminds you of sunny day's when they gather the sweet flower pollen, and not a world of parasitic wasp mimics.
Beneath one Victorian Grave stone, I saw a cluster of what looked like medium wasps milling around holes along the concrete's base edge. At first I thought these were soldier wasps keeping guard but later I learned that they were Cuckoo Bees of the genus Nomada!! There are around thirty UK species and they are cleptoparasitic on Mining Bees and are Wasp mimics. The group that I was watching might have been the species Nomada flava, they use the Tawny mining bee, Andrena fulva as host. I observed one Andrena fulva sitting on a leaf near the Grave but this is at best circumstantial evidence for the suggested identification.
Nomada flava?
Nomada flava lands by its host's hole.
The female Nomada will enter the Mining Bee's nest and lay her eggs in one of this solitary Bee's chambers. Nomada larvae will kill the eggs or larvae of its host and then feed on the pollen store that the Mining Bee has prepared for its own early stages.
One of the host of Nomada Bees, Andrena fulva
It is a tough life down there in the insect world. These Cuckoo Bees will hover near their hosts holes and sometimes land to investigate often a little distance away. As one Nomada alighted, a desperate struggle ensured. The action was brief and fast and furious, the bee and its predator rolled over and over at such a speed it was hard to get a good image and see clearly what was going on. So what was happening, can you make it out? My impression is that it looks like a Bee graveyard, and holding this Nomada Bee, it does look like a spider's unusual marked red and black marked legs perhaps the predator was laying in wait inside its own hole. Remarkably the bee managed to escape.
