Oligolectic

Definition

Specialist bees have life cycles synchronised to their host plant's flowering, and cannot simply switch if it disappears. It makes them far more vulnerable than generalists — and often much better pollinators of that particular plant. A large proportion of mining bees are oligolectic, which is a substantial part of why solitary bee declines are steeper than honey bee statistics suggest.

Honey records that discuss this

• Bell heather honeyRich, warm and fruity with a caramel base and a distinct red-fruit note — sweeter and rounder than ling heather, and without its smoky bitterness.

Plant records that discuss this

• Field scabiousAmong the best late-summer nectar plants in the northern European flora, and one of the few that supports an obligate specialist bee.
• Red bartsiaModest in volume and decisive in kind. A single specialist bee depends on it absolutely.
• Small scabiousExcellent on both counts, and valuable specifically for how late it continues.
• White bryonyA long-running pollen source, and the entire basis of one specialist bee's existence.

Bee records that discuss this

• Mining beesSolitary ground-nesting bees, and the small volcano-shaped mounds of fine soil that appear on lawns and bare paths in April are theirs. Mining bees are the classic spring solitary bees of the northern hemisphere: short-lived, entirely harmless, often nesting in dense aggregations that look like a colony but are not, and a great many of them are specialists that visit only one kind of flower.
• Blunthorn beesGround-nesting bees from one of the oldest bee lineages, and mostly tight floral specialists. Melitta species provision their cells with pollen from a single plant genus — bellflowers, knapweed, heather or bird's-foot trefoil depending on the species — and they belong to a family that includes the oil-collecting bees and is now thought to contain the closest living relatives of the ancestral bee.
• Shaggy beesSmall, entirely black bees with conspicuously shaggy pollen brushes, found almost exclusively on yellow composites. They nest in bare sandy ground in aggregations, and the males have a habit of sleeping inside closed flower heads overnight — several can be found packed into a single hawkbit on a cool morning.

Guide records that discuss this

• Specialist bees and the plants they cannot do withoutA large minority of bee species collect pollen from one plant genus and will starve rather than switch. For them a flowery garden is not forage — it is scenery around the one thing they need.