Tree Bee

For the past couple of weeks I have been setting my 40W actinic light trap on a Friday night as part of the garden moth scheme. It is a constant effort moth trapping survey to determine moth population trends for the commoner species. Well my tally so far is a total of 4 moths and 2 species with Friday nights new species being a chestnut and a worn individual at that.

A beautiful warm and sunny day today, the local 7-spot ladybirds were catching a few rays as they started to emerge from their overnight roosts, if you can call them that?

There are 11 in the picture above and nearby there were another 15. So far I haven’t seen a single harlequin ladybird in the garden, which I think is good.
Bumblebees were also very much in evidence today with queen buff-tailed bumblebees visiting the flowering hellebores. Then Lisa pointed out a bee that had landed on an ornamental butterfly and luckily I managed to get a shot.


This is Bombus hypnorum or the tree bee. First recorded in the UK in Hampshire in  2001, it has rapidly been spreading across the south and south east and even starting to spread north. In fact amongst our UK bumble bees it is bucking the trend in that it is increasing and expanding it’s range and becoming more common. This is a queen and mighty fine she is too and needless to say the first one I have recorded in Longfield.