A small red and black wasp which is a cleptoparasite of the similar looking Harpactus tumidus (Panzer), occurring in the same sparsely-vegetated sandy areas as its host.

This large and readily identifiable pompilid would not be easily overlooked and is now probably extinct in mainland Britain. The species is, however, still recorded in the Channel Islands.

Identification keys and general biology are given in Malyshev (1968), Iwata (1976), Richards (1980), Gauld & Bolton (1988) and Yeo & Corbet (1995).

Identification keys and general biology are given in Morgan (1984), Gauld & Bolton (1988), Kunz (1989) and Falk (1991).

This species is outwardly similar to others in the Formica rufa-group and is commonly known as the Scottish wood ant.

A rather local lowland species of bumble bee which has shown a significant decline in range in recent years. Identification keys and general biology are found in Sladen (1912), Free & Butler (1959), Alford (1975) and Prŷs-Jones & Corbet (1991). A very rare melanic form, f. nigrescens, was found a few times in East Sussex in the 1920s. Darker specimens were found again in 2011 on Dungeness (N Gammans pers. comm) and at Deal (RL Evans & ED Moss, pers. comm)

Colonies of this bumblebee produce few (less than 100) workers (Loken, 1973; von Hagen, 1994) and so female production is consequently also low.

Certain Nomada species visit the same restricted flower species as those of their host bees. One such species is N. armata, which largely confines its flower visits to two species of scabious (see below).