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Submit a sighting of Osmia bicornis (O. rufa: red-mason bee)

Reporting your sightings of Osmia bicornis

For the first time, BWARS has enabled online recording for this characteristic and widespread spring-flying species of bee. No dedicated recording effort of this species has been launched in Britain or Ireland before and an accurate picture of its current distribution is lacking. Questions we are keen to address include:

  1. What is its current range and distribution - especially in Scotland and Ireland (where it is a recent arrival/introduction)?
  2. Is there any sign of range extension since the BWARS atlas was published?
  3. How common is the bee in sites away from cities, towns and villages?
  4. What nesting sites are being used?
  5. Which flowers are being visited?

If you have any records of this very distinctive and widely distributed solitary bee, please submit the full details via this online recording platform. There is a facility for uploading photographs to support records if you have them. Please include any information on numbers, sexes, flower visitation, nesting sites and behaviour in the "Comments" section.

Female O. bicornis. Photo: J. Early
Male O. bicornis Photo: L. Hislop

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You are about to submit a sighting of a red mason-bee, Osmia bicornis. First, tell us who identified it and provide photos of the record if you have any. This information will help us confirm the record
Contact Details
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Identification
Please provide the spatial reference of the record. You can enter the reference directly in the Grid Ref box, or search for a place to zoom the map then click on the map to set it. The more the map is zoomed in, the more precise the grid square will be.
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Please tell us when you saw the record and provide any additional information.
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