Sallows and shovellers at Whetsted

It was a lovely warm afternoon and the sallows in the hedgerow between the gravel pits looked very promising. The insects seemed to be making their specific choices of the ripest or tastiest trees, and some were therefore much more popular than others, which appeared deserted.

Just beyond the first of the three big oaks, a sallow was attracting honeybees, filling their leg baskets with yellow pollen:

Moving on to other sallows in the row, as well as quite a few more Honeybees, Apis mellifera, I found three species of bumblebee, Bombus terrestris, rupestris and hypnorum. B. hypnorum, the tree honeybee is a very new species to the UK, having arrived since 2000, on the back of a significant expansion of its range in Europe. As this is a new species for me I had it checked out on ispot, and David Notton from the Natural History Museum, and Stuart Roberts from BWARS, amongst a few others, kindly confirmed the ID.

There was also a bee-fly, Bombylius major, hovering as it fed.