Colletes hederae

Ivy bees are about the same size as honey bees, but their body colour and other features make them easy to tell apart.

Males look noticeably different from females: they have longer antennae and a smaller body.

The ivy bee is native to mainland Europe and belongs to a group of plasterer bees related to Colletes succinctus.

In Britain, the ivy bee was first recorded in September 2001 at Worth Matravers in Dorset, on the south coast of England.

The ivy bee has also been expanding its range in continental Europe, and by 2021 it had reached Scotland and Ireland.

Researchers estimate that the ivy bee colonised Britain at a rate of roughly 25 to 50 km per year.

It has one generation a year and flies in autumn, from late August or early September to late October, sometimes into early November.

Each female digs her own burrow, but nests are often packed together in large groups that can contain several thousand nests.

Females are pollen specialists on ivy: in a Sussex study, about 98.5% of pollen grains carried home by females came from ivy flowers.

Its flight season matches the long flowering period of ivy, its key pollen plant, which most other wild bees make little use of.

When females emerge from their nests, several males often pounce on them at once, forming conspicuous mating clusters.

It is still unknown how far ivy bees fly between their nests and the ivy they feed on.

The ivy bee is a recently recognised species: it was described as new to science only in 1993.

Unlike many specialist bees, the ivy bee is not considered scarce or threatened in Britain.