Davies' Colletes

It was a hot and sunny morning for surveying road verges with the three Barnack volunteers - the group made steady progress, but by midday it was already getting uncomfortable so we called it a day.

After lunch I dropped Alex at one of his customers and then made a first visit to the tip to get rid of some of the  many year's worth of accumulated junk that we'd removed from the shed at the end of Molly's garden. While I was doing this I spotted a man putting cut Japanese Knotweed into the garden waste skip - highly illegal but it's quite possible that he didn't know what the plant was. I alerted one of the operatives who reported it to his manager - hopefully they'll be able to remove the material before it goes into the system.

The warm weather has brought lots of bees into the garden. The Golden Marguerite Anthemis tinctoria was covered with Davies' Colletes Colletes daviesanus. This is our most widespread Colletes, capable of exploiting a great variety of habitats, including gardens, brownfield sites, arable margins, heathland, various coastal habitats and a range of grassland types. It shows much less attachment to sandy sites than most Colletes and is the Colletes most likely to be found on heavier clay soils. It occurs throughout Britain extending north to the Inverness area.

Pollen seems to be obtained exclusively from Asteraceae, with mayweeds, chamomiles, Yarrow and Tansy often attracting large numbers of foraging females. Nesting occurs in vertical faces, and this is the only Colletes that seems to regularly nest in walls, typically soft mortar or weathering sandstone. Adults fly from June until September.