The solitary bees are not simply ignored. We are often totally unaware of their existence, even though they live on almost every continent. They fly in Spring, then hunker down under the ground and dont emerge till the next Spring breeding season. You could say they are not like other bees. You could imagine they are an early experiment in social insectdom. They are very successful however in one respect. They pollinate the Spring fruit trees that we treasure so much. Every cherry and apple, plum and apricot has a few Andrena or similar bees sucking up the nectar, long before the hive bees have produced enough offspring to do the job. Small-scale works for this enterprise!
The European Andrena cineraria has its males emerge from their long-term tombs in April, followed by the females who of course are all queens, in the vernacular of the true social insects. Several other Palaearctic mining bees have a very similar life history, such as the willow mining bee in…
