267. TWO HUNDRED AND SIXTY SEVEN!!

 I can't draw the plants without thinking about their survival.  They need pollinators. Bees do a lot of this work. In the wildlife garden at work, we have a bee hotel. Sitting next to it on a sunny day is a joy. The gentle buzzing of the bees as they go from the wild flowers around and back to the little holes that have become their nest for this season, at least.  I really had no idea how many different sorts of bees there are and I have now learnt a lot more about them and as a result have become very interested in the solitary bees. 

There are 267 species of bee in the UK.  Everybody knows about the honeybee and the bumblebee, but most bees are solitary. That is, they don't live in social groups. In the case of the Red Mason bee, the males hatch first then hover around waiting for the females to hatch.  As soon as they do, they mate and then go.  The female then looks for somewhere to lay her eggs.  This is where bee hotels come in.  She crawls into one of these tubes and leaves a little ball of pollen, then lays an egg on top and blocks off the compartment with mud or leaves. She repeats this until the tube is full.  As the males emerge first, she lays these eggs last.  It's completely fascinating!  A female will lay 20-30 eggs in her lifetime.  They will stay in these tubes until next summer when the cycle will start all over again.

Solitary bees are much more efficient pollinators than honey bees, as they drop pollen more easily.  Red Mason bees are one of the first to emerge and they are good for pollinating fruit trees, whose blossom appears in early spring.  Blue Mason bees come next and Leaf cutter bees (yes, they cut up leaves for their nest compartments) emerge later.   I haven't found out about anyone else yet!  I'm waiting for the wildlife gardener to come back. He knows everything.

I do know that some of the bees make nests underground (Mining bees, of course) and some of the bees are really tiny and don't look like bees at all.  Well they do look like bees, but not bees as most people imagine.

Life is great in a wildlife garden. It changes all the time.  There is always something new to learn. Pay attention next time you spot a bee "hotel" in your local park or nature reserve.  It's really interesting!

I have drawn a dandelion, one of the first spring flowers, giving us brilliant yellow after the grey of winter and providing early pollen for the bees that come early.

Here is a red mason bee going into her nest.

Some of the holes are blocked off with mud, that she has got from the pond not far from the bee hotel.  (See how it's all linked).

  I have exhibitions in September and November, so I need to look as busy as a bee.

More blocked off holes. I would say Red Mason bees, because they seem to be muddy, rather than leafy.