Bee longing

Kate Bradbury is mesmerised by the solitary bees in her mum's front garden
Andrena carantonica
Its Latin name may be Andrena carantonica, but to Kate Bradbury this will always be known as the 'front garden bee'. Photograph: Naturepix/Alamy

I spent the majority of last week trying to identify the solitary bees in my mum's front garden. For about three weeks each spring there are clouds of them, all buzzing around frantically looking for somewhere to nest (usually the lawn and borders). I used to think there was just one species but, in the hours spent patiently watching and photographing them last week, I noted at least three types. Or was it four? I've no idea.

Unlike bumblebees, which live in nests, solitary bees lay eggs in individual cells. The female leaves a parcel of pollen and nectar for each grub to eat and it emerges as an adult bee a year later, to mate and start the process again. But of the 240-odd UK species I can confidently identify three: tawny mining bee, hairy footed flower bee, leafcutter bee. That's approximately 237 that exist in some vague unfathomable ether and could be outside my mum's front door. I'm ashamed.

Bumblebees are much easier to identify: for many species you just look at their bums. They have helpful common names like 'red-tailed', 'buff-tailed' and 'white-tailed'. You get your eye in and learn to count stripes, lemony or French-mustard hues; tongue length. And they're mostly big and bumbly, therefore easy to photograph, and so unutterably beautiful that learning to identify them is one of the happiest things you can do (well I think so).

But solitary bees make my brain hurt. Some of them are beautiful, a few of them have common names and many are easy to identify once you've got your eye in, but the mystery ones in my mum's garden are virtually identical. I uploaded a photograph of one to the wildlife identification site iSpot, and then impatiently asked the brains of Twitter to name it. The result? It could be one of three species, depending on the colour of its pollen baskets. Pollen baskets are the stiff hairs on the hind legs of females, which are used to gather pollen and, in my photograph, were concealed by the bee's wings. I wanted to cry.

Perhaps it doesn't matter that I can't name the solitary bees living in my mum's front garden. Maybe it's enough that that they just appear for three weeks every spring and then disappear back where they came from, as my mum puts it. But she didn't know they nested in the lawn and borders, that they spend pretty much their entire lives in the few metres outside her front door. They mate and lay eggs close to where they hatched and then die within a few weeks. All this and they pollinate her apple blossom. Surely it's worth knowing what they are?

Like so much in life, it's easy to ignore what we can't see. In gardening terms, if we can't identify a habitat then it's easy to destroy it. Such destruction, in this case, could be as simple as my mum mulching the borders or "getting the drive done".

I've often wondered what it is that makes my mum's so perfect for these bees; none of the other front gardens in her road seems so popular. But then, there are so few left. Most have been paved over entirely or partially paved with a heavily landscaped, low-maintenance corner. But my mum's is exactly how it was when the house was built in the 1930s. It has a small lawn and borders, with a few bare patches of earth. And it's south facing. Bare, soft soil in a sunny location is prime solitary bee habitat, and the same site is used for generations, apparently. It's amazing to think the ancestors of these identical-looking bees that make my brain hurt, could have been using the same lawn and borders for 80 years.

At the end of the week I took another photo, which clearly showed black and silver pollen baskets. I posted it on Twitter. I got my answer: Andrena carantonica. It doesn't have a common name, but to me it will always be the "front garden bee". May the bees and the gardens never be paved over.

Kate Bradbury writes and commissions wildlife content for Gardeners' World Magazine and writes a weekly blog on You can read her other posts for the Guardian gardening blog here.

This blogpost was altered on May 17 2012 to correct the number of solitary bees in the second paragraph from 137 to 237.

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