A revised and updated checklist of the UK aculeate fauna has just been published covering all of the species of interest to BWARS. The checklist compiled after much painstaking work by George R. Else, Barry Bolton & Gavin R. Broad can be downloaded freely from the Biodiversity Data Journal at: https://bdj.pensoft.net/article/8050/instance/2650988/
BWARS member Paddy Saunders has produced a new atlas of bumblebees Bumblebees of Cornwall and Scilly. It is available as a printed book or as free pdf from the Environmental Records Centre for Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly here.
BWARS member Steven Falk's much anticipated Field Guide to Bees of Great Britain and Ireland has been published. This is the first extensive guide to all the British and Irish bee species since Edward Saunder's 1896 tome - The Hymenoptera Aculeata of the British Islands. The new field guide is 432 pages, with keys, species accounts and many photographs of nearly every species. In addition there are many illustrations by renowned insect illustrator Richard Lewington.
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.
