29-June London’s Buzzing Secrets

When attempting to identify bumble bees it is always worth noting their size, overall colour, tail colour, face colour if given the chance and any bands of colour on their body. If the bee is very large, with a buff tail, it is almost certainly a female B. terrestris. If the bee has a distinctly red tail, it may be either B. lapidarius or B. pratorum.

If the bee with the red tail also has two yellow bands, it is likely to be either a male or female B. pratorum. If it is just black, it may be a male B. lapidarius and if it only has one yellow band, a female B. lapidarius. If the bee is an overall reddish brown, it is more likely to be B. pascuorum.

White-tailed bumble bees present more of a problem. White tails with three yellow bands will be either a male, female or worker of B. hortorum. A white tail with a yellow face may well indicate a male B. lucorum whereas a white tail with a black face indicates a male B. terrestris.

Workers of both these species cannot really be separated in the field. Other bees add to the confusion, especially cuckoo bees (also called homeless bees) as they tend to mimic in looks the host bee that they parasitise. They lay their eggs in the nests of other bees. A clue to their identity can be the absence of pollen baskets, which they have no need for as they do not feed their own larvae. They also tend to be darker in colour. Potter bees look like bumble bees but tend to be smaller, have a defined waist and are generally more variable in colour. The flower bee Anthophora plumipes also looks like a bumble bee but has noticeably larger eyes.

The honey bee, which may well swarm this month, needs little introduction, but it also has many lookalikes.

. Mining bees look similar, but tend to be seen around sandy banks either digging or entering holes, where they prefer to have their nests. The mason bee Osmia rufa may also be confused, but is redder than a honey bee and has a black head. The male has a white face and the female two small ‘horns’ between her antennae.

There are two hundred and fifty different bees in Britain, and Bushy Park and Mitcham Common are two places where a reasonable number of different species may be seen.

The yellow-faced bee, carder bee and potter bees are all recorded from Mitcham Common and flower bees, mason bees, leaf-cutter and several mining bees from Bushy Park. The unforgettable, enormous, deep violet blue carpenter bee is a vagrant that sometimes seems to float through gardens on warm summer days. In the past any wasp-like insects that were seen leaving nesting holes used to be called nomad bees and any bees seen digging holes were called gum bees. Any bees seen rolling around on the ground under lime trees are merely bees drunk on fermented nectar

Ants

Ants

The largest, most impressive ant in London and certainly the one to look out for in June is the Wood ant Formica rufa. Its head, antennae, legs and abdomen are all dark brown but its thorax and the bottom of its legs are red. Its nests are conspicuous being a pile of pine needles possibly one metre high and two metres wide although they can be much larger. These ant hills or mounds are found easily enough in the pinewoods near Wisley especially on Oakley Common among the Scot’s pine. The mound we see is just the top of the nest there being a labyrinth of galleries, tunnels and chambers lying below ground and possibly even connected to smaller ant hills nearby.

Inside there may be 300,000 worker ants (approximately 6 mm in length) and several queens almost double their size. These nests are worth examining with caution for all the activity that surrounds them. Well worn trails many metres long can lead to them, busy with ants carrying various items. One or several may be carrying caterpillars. They seem to be particularly fond of sawfly caterpillars. Others carry a variety of dead insects or even woodlice as well as twigs and pine needles for any refurbishment of the nest that may be needed.

The twigs are used to block the entrances at night from marauders. Ants may be seen climbing the pine trees right up to the canopy or “milking” aphids for their sugary honeydew on plants nearby. They may even be seen carrying favoured seeds from thistles, gorse and violets all of which have small oily parts which attract them.

If you get too close to these nests a variety of things can happen. If the nest is disturbed workers may pour out to defend it. This particular ant is quite large, bold and aggressive. It may turn round and spray formic acid at you from the back of its abdomen. This has been known to feel like pin pricks when on the face and leave a sharp smell a little like ammonia. If not deterred, then they won’t hesitate to bite you with their large easily seen mandibles. However, a nest covered in wood ants in June could be a swarm. Unlike many other ants, when an unfertilised wood ant queen leaves a nest pursued by many winged male suitors she doesn’t necessarily fly off but sometimes copulates on the outside surface of the ant hill itself providing quite a spectacle for the observer.