Ashy mining bee

How to recognise it

A medium black bee with two broad ash-grey hair bands on the thorax separated by a black band, and a shining blue-black abdomen with almost no hair. Males are slimmer with a tuft of white facial hair.

• Two clean grey bands across a black thorax — unmistakable and shared with no other common British bee.
• Shining blue-black hairless abdomen.
• Small volcano-shaped soil mounds in short turf and lawns from March to May.
• Flies March to May and is gone by June.

Body length 10–15 mm (typically 13 mm).

Biology

Social organisation

Solitary

Each female builds and provisions her own nest with no workers and no caste. Most of the world's bee species.

Nesting

Burrows in the ground

Digs vertical burrows 20-30 cm deep in short turf, lawns, footpaths, banks and cliff tops, with cells branching off. Nests in loose aggregations that can run to hundreds in a favourable lawn, which is what generates the alarmed enquiries.

Carries pollen

Scopa — dense hairs on the hind leg

On the wing

March to May

Lifecycle

1. 1Emergence and matingAdults emerge in March and April, males first, and mate near the nesting area.March to April.
2. 2NestingEach female digs and provisions her own burrow alone for four to six weeks and then dies.
3. 3OverwinteringLarvae develop through summer and overwinter underground as adults, emerging the following spring.Roughly eleven months underground.

Where it lives and what it does

Habitat

Lawns, parks, gardens, coastal cliffs, chalk grassland, hedge banks and woodland rides — anywhere with short turf, bare ground and spring blossom.

Distribution

Across Europe from Ireland and Scandinavia to the Mediterranean and east into Russia.

Behaviour

Fast and low, making repeated short trips between burrow and blossom through April. It is one of the most watchable solitary bees precisely because the aggregations are dense and the animals ignore observers entirely.

Pollination role

An important early pollinator of fruit blossom, oilseed rape, blackthorn, dandelion and currants. Like other mining bees it flies in cool conditions when honey bees are still in cluster.

High on spring blossom and oilseed rape, and valuable for flying in cool April weather.

What it forages on

A broad generalist favouring spring blossom, brassicas and dandelion.

Honey

Produces no honey

None. One pollen loaf per cell, no colony, no winter store.

Relationship with people

How people interact with it

Encountered mostly as a supposed lawn infestation and mostly harmless. The mounds are temporary, cause no damage to turf, and wash back into the sward with the first rain after the bees have finished.

Management

Nothing needs doing. Do not water, roll or treat the mounds. Mowing normally is harmless — the nests are far below blade height.

Conservation

Widespread and not threatened, though like all ground-nesting bees it is squeezed by soil sealing. Paving, artificial grass, landscape fabric and dense fertilised turf all remove nesting habitat that looks like nothing to a human eye.