Tawny Mining Bee

The Tawny Mining Bees is one of the most recognisable springtime solitary bees with dense ginger-orange hair. Females are honeybee sized bees with thick ginger hair on the thorax and long, dense, orange hair on the abdomen. Their legs, faces and undersides all have black hair. Males are smaller and thinner than females, with less dense, browner hair and a white tuft of hair on their face. They have protruding jaws, although so do several other mining bees, so it isn’t that easy to identify.

They can be seen in a wide variety of habitats including gardens and parks, from March through to June. They feed on a variety of flowers including fruit trees, hawthorn, blackthorn, maple, willow, buttercups and dandelions and as you can see in the picture, also marsh marigold.

The Tawny Mining Bee mates in spring, after which the male will die and the female will begin building a nest. Female Tawny Mining Bees dig a 20-30 cm tunnel in the ground containing cell and will fill the cells with a mixture of nectar and pollen, where she lays one egg in each cell. When the larvae hatch, they feed on the nectar and pollen and will then pupate within a few weeks. They will emerge as adults the following spring, after hibernating over winter.

They are commonly found throughout most of England with increasing numbers in central Scotland.