My recent move from the edge of Colchester to Capel St Mary brings with it not only the attraction of reduced journey times and costs to visit favourite haunts, but also the prospect of being able to do some “recording” by the simple expedient of stepping out of the kitchen door. In even the most modest garden there is much to occupy the careful observer.

The most obvious presence in any garden is the bumblebee. Recent studies have shown an increasing dependence on gardens for many species. As far as the bumblebees are concerned the attractions are obvious. The avid flower gardener will be striving to fill his or her plot with a profusion of blooms from early spring until late autumn and this is just what the bumblebees need: an “all you can eat” buffet throughout the active season. It is not difficult to attract at least six different types to a garden, even if putting names to those types can be a little more challenging. Some species, such as the Buff-tailed Bumblebee (Bombus terrestris) can emerge very early in the year if there is a spell of warm weather, and there is often not much on the menu in February, but here the lowly White Deadnettle, sprouting out from under a hedge or other hiding place, can be invaluable so don’t be too hasty to weed it out. Next to arrive on the scene as spring unfolds is a group conveniently summarised as the mining bees. This includes a host of small to medium sized insects that burrow into bare ground with the females labouring on their own to construct a nest and raise their own progeny. For this reason they are also called “solitary bees”, to compare them with the social structure and cooperation amongst the bumblebees and the Honeybee. Even quite small dry, bare patches in between bedding plants can be used, with miniature “volcanoes” of soil particles often indicating where excavations are in progress. One of the common visitors to gardens in spring is the Tawny Mining Bee (Andrena fulva), a beautiful coppery-orange to rusty-brown bee that often burrows into the small “cliffs” created by the more assiduous gardeners who cut crisp vertical edges around their lawns. I recently discovered a nationally rare “cuckoo bee” or brood-parasite of this bee in my mother’s garden in Gloucestershire, so who knows what you might find!

My garage is a rather elderly construction of reinforced concrete posts and slabs and even this offers opportunities for nesting bees. In retrospect, this garage type provided me with my first contact with solitary bees when, as a young teenager in Luton, I noticed that our family garage had unused bolt holes in it blocked with soil. Many years were to go by before I learnt that these mud walls were the work of a solitary bee: the Red Mason Bee (Osmia rufa). It is distinctly to the gardener’s benefit to provide homes for this species, because it is one of the more prolific pollinators of fruit trees. Today, it is possible to purchase any number of bug homes and bee nesting tube structures (such as those made by the Oxford Bee Company) to encourage this and similar species, but a bundle of broken bamboo cane ends hung up under a dry overhang may be just as attractive and within the scope of even the most parsimonious of natural history budgets. These bees often nest in cavities in old walls, with several females frequently sharing a common entrance burrow in soft mortar although they each work on their own nest tunnel once within the wall.

Another group of bees that may utilise these garage bolt holes and other opportune crevices are the leaf-cutter bees. They may come to the attention of the garden most readily as the cause of the semi-circular chunks missing from rose bush leaves. They use these leaf sections to “wallpaper” the sides of their nesting tunnels, which may be an old beetle hole in wood, crevices in walls and occasionally in the ground. More occasionally they use empty peg holes in wooden patio furniture and even the end of an outside tap! I have recorded Megachile centuncularis from my garden. It has a striking brush of long orange hairs on the underside of its abdomen, with which it carries pollen back to its nest tunnel.

As the summer unfolds, those annoying yellow and black wasps appear just in time to spoil barbecues and picnics. These socially nesting species may appear bothersome (and you do have to watch out if you are one of the unfortunate few who suffer extreme allergic reactions to stings) but these industrious workers are a real boon to gardeners. As predators in the garden ecosystem, they rid our plants of thousands of potential pests such as saw-fly larvae, caterpillars of moths and butterflies and beetles. I await, of course, a retaliatory article from Tony Prichard or Rob Parker, extolling the virtues of your garden as a wonderful place to let moths and butterflies flourish, letting the caterpillars run free!

There may also be a large number of much smaller, inconspicuous wasps, again leading a solitary rather than social existence, in the garden. Like the mining bees, they may nest in burrows in the ground but many nest in old beetle burrows in dead wood, hollow dead plant stems or even the straw thatch of an old cottage’s roof. One such thatch-nester is Psenulus pallipes, a small, slender black wasp. I have just recorded this species in my garden (despite not having a thatched roof), this being only the second modern record for Suffolk. Given the number of thatched buildings in the county, this species must surely be more widespread than this would indicate. It stocks its nest chambers with aphids as food items for its larvae, so it is another boon for the gardener.

The lack of good quality handbooks makes the study of mining bees a difficult subject, but there are a few good books dealing with solitary wasps, ants and bumblebees, such as those in the Naturalists’ Handbooks series. The need to examine most things under a microscope is also off-putting, but if any member is interested in pursuing the study of these insects further, please contact me and I’ll try and arrange a specific field meeting or workshop event accordingly. If enough people are interested, a small study group could be formed. Even if precise identification is beyond your grasp, there is scope for study and data gathering whilst enjoying your garden. How many Red Mason Bees share the same entrance hole in a wall? How much time do bumblebees spend foraging? Could the prey items being brought back to a wasp’s nest? How long does each foraging trip of a mining bee take before it returns to its underground nest tunnel?