The first British specimen of this bee was collected near Tilshead, Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire, on 9 July 1949 by the late P W E Currie. However, about fifteen years were to elapse before its identity was established by D B Baker and the record published as Pseudocilissa dimidiata (Baker, 1964).
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Melitta species generally have very narrow pollen preferences, either visiting a single species (monolectic) or a group of closely related species (oligolectic). The present species belongs to the second category.
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As with other woodland insects, the fortunes of several bees have been adversely affected by modern woodland management - the abandonment of coppicing leading to stands of mature broadleaved trees or the establishment of coniferous plantations. Both these woodland types eventually shade out the understorey and its rich and varied herb communities. One bee adversely affected by such changes is Osmia pilicornis, though where suitable conditions exist it can still be locally common.
A paper describing the biology and habitat of this species Distribution, biology and… Read more
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In the past, this bee was sometimes misidentified as O. parietina or O. uncinata.
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There are very few British aculeates which are largely confined to wetland habitats. One of these is Hylaeus pectoralis, a bee which for many years was almost entirely associated with the fens of East Anglia, especially Wicken Fen, Cambridgeshire.
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Males of this strikingly-coloured, medium-sized bee hover and dart around patches of flowering labiates (and some other flowers) and regularly pursue other insects.
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This is the only example in Britain of a small 'carpenter bee', so-called because of its nesting habits - the female excavating its nest burrow in dead, pithy stems.
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The largest of the nine British species in the genus, with a population that apparently differs slightly from the Continental race in both morphological and ecological respects. As a result, it has been recognised as a distinct subspecies, C. cunicularius celticus, by O'Toole (1974). More recently, major differences between the Continental and British populations have been found in the chemistry of the Dufour's gland secretions (Albans et al., 1980; Duffield et al., in Bell & Carde, 1984), raising the possibility that the British populations may be specifically distinct.