Thursday, 13 August 2026

Not all bees are social!

 When you think of bees, you probably think of honey bees and bumblebees, which are all social insects. However, not all bees are social, most bees in the UK in fact are solitary bees. Yesterday Crafty Green Boyfriend and I attended an excellent Introduction to Solitary Bees event, organised by TWIC (The Wildlife Information Centre). You can read more about it in this week's Substack post.

The photo below shows a female Hairy Footed Flower Bee, my favourite solitary bee! These bees can be seen in Edinburgh's Botanic Gardens in the Spring. 


 

6 comments:

Simon Douglas Thompson said...

I'm sad as I love solitary bees, but they are all gone by high summer

Lee@A Guide to Northeastern Gardening said...

I always enjoy reading about bees as there is so much to learn about each species, their role and their distinctive behaviors, plus I recently did a talk on pollinators!

Lowcarb team member said...

I do like that photograph.

All the best Jan

Crafty Green Poet said...

Hi Simon, yes many of them have a very short season (as adults anyway)

Crafty Green Poet said...

I agree, there's loads to learn about all the bee species! I would have liked to hear your talk about pollinators

Crafty Green Poet said...

Thanks Jan