When many people talk of bees they mean the honeybee, but our countryside is also home to a large number of its cousins. It was one of these that I heard about a few days ago. The insects had established themselves in the loose brickwork at the top of a stable's gable wall. They were very active and noisy, and it was initially thought they had stung a horse. The animal's owners called in a friend who was a former pest controller. He assured them that the insects were not hornets and suggested they were probably a species of bumblebee. I offered to try to identify them.
An encounter at close quarters was difficult, which was why I had to stand in the middle of a patch of nettles and brambles, sweeping the air with a butterfly net on a very long handle. Recalling the instruction to gunners to shoot in front of a moving target, I tried to anticipate the flight paths of these fast-moving insects. Eventually I did collect a few specimens, though the first bee I caught escaped with ease, so long is it since I last used the net in this way. The insects proved to be the hairy-footed flower bee, Anthophora plumipes. This is actually a solitary bee, but it often groups together in colonies where the nesting conditions are right. As it favours old walls, the decaying brickwork at the top of the gable suited it perfectly.
The nearly all-black queens do look like bumblebees but have a patch of bright orange hairs on their back legs. The males can be mistaken for honeybees but have distinctive pale lemon or cream markings on their faces. They are among the earliest of bees on the wing in spring, waiting only for plants such as lungwort and red dead-nettle to come into flower. By early summer their breeding season will be over and the gable-top quiet once again.