Ian Tew has been hard at work adding another big batch of around 300 images of many species. Do browse the gallery and enjoy these new species images.
Smicromyne rufipes female - Ian Tew
A superbly illustrated key to the Chrysididae of the Nordic and Baltic countries (in English) is available as a free download. It should provide a very useful aid to identifying wasps in the family Chrysididae. The key includes all the British mainland species apart from Chrysis rutiliventris* . It can be downloaded here
* C. vanlithi - treated as a subspecies of C. rutiliventris by some authors - is included in the key.
The NBN are running a short project seeking to classify recorder motivations, and understand what support different recorders prefer. They're using both questionnaires and interviews, and need as wide a range of responses as possible to cover the diversity of circumstances and perspectives. If you collect data from the environment and would like to be included, further details are here:
A significant leap north west for Colletes hederae is apparent, with the discovery of a well established population around Llandudno in North Wales, on 8 October. A large nest aggregation was found on Little Orme as well as individuals at ivy and nesting in a roadside verge in nearby Llandudno. The latest map includes these new records.
Latest Map
BWARS member Ian Cheeseborough and Pete Boardman at the site of the recently discovered nest aggregation of Colletes hederae on the Little Orme.
As well as workshops at the upcoming BWARS AGM, two other opportunities to learn how to identify aculeates are listed in the BWARS Diary here
2015 AGM - Oxford University Natural History Museum, Saturday & Sunday 17 - 18 October
The provisional programme of workshops and talks is available for download here
As usual there has been a steady stream of requests for identifications of aculeates, often from photographs. Helping new people to understand how to name the insects in this group, what to look for, whether the insect even is an aculeate, is an important part of the support BWARS offers. Much of this support is through the workshops held at various venues around the country.
Buglife have produced a report detailing the results of a survey for seven bee species in south west England.
The report presents the findings of the project’s first ground-truthing surveys from May to August 2014. The objectives of these surveys were:
BWARS members Mike Edwards and Jeremy Early have collaborated with Scottish Natural Heritage to produce a guide to some of the common and more readily identified bees of Scotland. The guide can be downloaded here
BWARS member Ian Tew has been busy upoading some 230 images of bees and wasps in 23 genera, significantly improving our online image collection. Most of the images were taken in south Wales. View the images in the species accounts.
