The day presses down, close and sultry, as I sit cross-legged in front of our three compost bins. There’s a low hum from bumblebees foraging deep inside the nearby comfrey flowers, but I’m interested in a different type of bee. In front of the wooden bins are some large stone slabs, the thumb-width gaps between them unmortared. There, coming and going, are several large black bees. One lands on my trousers, brushing golden pollen from its body on to the hairs of its hind legs. With pollen sac neatly packed, it flies to the edge of the paving and slips beneath the lip.
The chocolate mining bee, Andrena scotica, is often found in gardens; firm sandy paths and terraces are favourite nesting places. They are solitary bees, the females laying eggs in separate burrows but sharing a common entrance hole. Each egg will hatch into a larva, eat the stored pollen and pupate before emerging as an adult.
Every few minutes a bee flies in, weaving and swaying like a plane in a cross wind, before lumbering along inside the crack in the paving. She has to negotiate fragments of broken stems, leaves and seedheads, dropped here from the prongs of garden forks. We now take care not to sweep up fallen muck or compost, as the brushings might alter the landscape features of the bees’ small world.
Each female bee goes in with a full pollen basket and emerges from her individual chamber having stored the food that her young will feed on. Many of their favourite pollen sources grow around the garden: apple, blackthorn, hawthorn, dandelion and bramble. Males were on the wing in March, and the females probably won’t be seen after the end of June, so I relish this opportunity to watch them.
A ground beetle, Elaphrus cupreus, potters across the stone, its wing cases studded with purple depressions in a symmetrical pattern. Spend some time in one place, you see so much. A chiffchaff calls from the nearby cherry tree. The river murmurs in the background and I find great peace in just sitting, watching these diligent bees.
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