King Bee

The black horehound along the lane may now be going over, because the wool carder bees that were favouring it last week have now spread into our garden, and are using both the forms of stachys I've established here. So in the space of a few days I've moved from being concerned about them, to being delighted that there are so many in the village this summer - and just a little smug, I confess, about the fact that I think I've helped by actively encouraging them over the past few years.

This is the dominant male in the back garden - a truly beautiful creature, in my opinion. He is armed and dangerous though: if you view this full-screen, you'll be able to see the spikes at the end of his abdomen, with which he's capable of killing his rivals. I don't think for a moment that he's dangerous to humans - you'd need to be small enough to be crushed between those spikes and the exoskeleton of his thorax, and he is, after all, only about 1.3cm in length - but he has all the confidence of a bee who believes himself to be the king of his little world, and he repeatedly came and hovered in front of me today, showing interest but no fear. I took this photo when he needed a little break from patrolling the hedge woundwort, and paused for a few seconds on a nearby honesty seed pod.

I introduced R to my little friend a couple of evenings ago, while we were drinking our after-dinner coffee in the garden, and R was enchanted by the masterful way he was zooming around the flowers, but stopping abruptly in mid-air every few seconds and hovering for long enough to check things out - a movement pattern which is well illustrated in this film. Today I saw  a couple of encounters between this bee and a lesser rival, who chanced coming into the hedge woundwort patch in the hope of meeting an unguarded female, but each time was body-slammed by my guy, and wisely fled the scene before things could become even more physical.

So far this year I haven't seen the King of the World mating, but the YouTube film and my post from last summer will give you a pretty good idea of the ferocity involved in that activity. "No" is clearly not an option when it comes to wool carder bees, but one of the things that's unusual about this species is that the females are able to mate continuously  throughout their lives. Being able to and wanting to aren't necessarily the same thing, of course, but from observing them I'd say that when they're collecting pollen or wool for their nests and don't want to be interrupted, the females are pretty skilled at taking rapid evasive action if an amorous male suddenly hoves into view.

There's another view of King Bee in resting mode here.