Hoplisoides punctuosus is known as Gorytes punctatus in some older literature. Hoplisoides has only recently been given generic status by British and some European authorities, as it resembles Gorytes in all but a few details. The genus Hoplisoides is found on all continents except Australia and Antarctica.
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The four species of Stelis which occur in the British Isles are all rare bees, in contrast to some other cleptoparasitic bee genera which contain species which are often locally common.
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Of the 24 species of endangered bees listed in the British Red Data Book (Shirt, 1987), four have only been recorded in recent years from a single site. One of these is Osmia xanthomelana, the largest and perhaps the most attractive of the ten species of British Osmia.
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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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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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Several years ago, D B Baker and G R Else found that the series of Scottish Osmia inermis in the Natural History Museum, London, consisted of two closely related species: O. inermis and O. uncinata. The latter was a species not previously known from the British Isles.
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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.