Here's how you can identify which bees are in your garden.
Honey Bees
Honeybees are easy to identify as they have especially distinct colouring; they are golden-brown with black abdominal stripes. The workers you will see are all female-workers. You can tell if they've been visiting flowers by looking for pollen on their legs. The reason why that is is because they rub pollen along their bodies and to their legs where they put it in tiny baskets.
Honeybees have been domesticated for centuries so it’s rare to find a truly wild colony. Honeybees have short tongues, so they are usually seen feeding on flowers that their tongues can easily reach.
They can be spotted on orchard trees, willows, raspberry flowers, oil-seed rape, and other trees, flowers, herbs and more.
Bumblebees
Have you ever wondered where bumblebees get their names from? Well it’s from the noise they make when get inside a flower! They move around the flower so incredibly fast that they sonicate the pollen off of the flower and onto their body; the noise they create when doing this is where they get their name from!
Bumblebees are a genus with many variants with more than 20 different species of bumblebees. In general bumblebees look similar with differing sizes and roundness. Bumblebees tend to be fairly social as they nest in colonies which contain from a few dozen to hundreds of bees in them. Bumblebees are slightly larger than honeybees and are much fluffier! Their black body is covered with thick black and yellow hair.
Most bumblebees can be found on many different plants so keep your eyes peeled for any of these small critters!
Mining Bees
Mining bees are solitary bees that create mounds by digging small tunnels in the ground to live in. No wonder they’re called mining bees! Mining bees are a genus of solitary bees. The most common species of mining bees are tawny and ashy mining bees
Tawny Mining Bees
Tawny mining bees tend to be roughly the same size as honeybees (the males being slightly smaller than the females). They have a black face and underside, and a reddish-orange coat (males tend to be slightly duller than females). Mining bees tend to prefer to nest in sandy soil but they can still be found in many varying areas like gardens and parks. These bees can be found on a range of plants as well such as willows, blackthorn, hawthorn, fruit trees and much more.
Ashy Mining Bees
Ashy bees have very different colouring from all of the other bees mentioned above. Their faces and undersides are black and they have a white and black coat, in short, they have a monochrome colouring. They are also able to adapt to many different habitats. This species can be found in open woodland, moorland hedges, coastal grassland, etc.
Mason Bees
These cool-coloured bees get their unique name because they use mud to close openings in their nests.
Mason bees are bees that nest in wood cavities and cavities in hollow stems and walls rather than in hives. Unlike the other bees, mason bees have more metallic colours like dull green, blue, and black. They don't have pollen baskets on their legs so they carry pollen in the hair on the underside of their abdomen. Although mason bees may look like some mining bees, you can tell them apart from the boxy heads and large jaws that mason bees have.
Red Mason Bees
Red mason bees are bees with a black head, orange abdomen and brown thorax. They can be found in built-up environments that have a lot of gardens, urban green spaces, and even churchyards! These bugs are also most likely to go to bee hotels (where gardeners have drilled holes for them).
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