Bees and lawn aeration
I found quite a few of these in the garden a day or two ago:
It turned out they are a solitary bee – the Tawny Mining Bee, Andrena fulva – which explained the half-dozen or so mini-volcanoes in the lawn
It seems Andrena fulva are completely harmless; in fact they aerate the lawn and pollenate everything in sight, so they are very welcome here. There’s a good article about them at kendall-bioresearch.co.uk.
10 April 2009 at 22:43
Fuzzy.
11 April 2009 at 06:44
A cracking close-up of the bee. Last year I saw quite a few bees which had nests in the lawn but they never stayed still long enough to photo.
12 April 2009 at 14:20
They’re beautiful! We’ve had several that i think are the same, but i haven’t seen any mineshafts. Every time i try to take a close-up of a bee it flies off a smidgen too soon, so well done. 80)
12 April 2009 at 14:54
Stunning macro shot of that Bee. The details are incredible.
14 April 2010 at 10:23
[...] The lawn is gradually being patterned with mining bee nests like last year’s), [...]
2 May 2011 at 19:54
[...] past years I’ve found tawny mining bees (Andrena fulva) in the lawn. This year they are back (as are the [...]