Pictured above are two bumblebee species you’re likely to see this month: Early and Red-tailed bumblebees. (In addition you may also see buff-tailed bumblebees which have been flying all year in some southern parts of the UK, Common carder bees (Bombus pascuorum) and Tree bumblebees, which are all starting to emerge).

How to ID them:

• The Early bumblebee (Bombus pratorum) is smaller than other bumblebee species (up to 13mm) and prettier with her fluffy yellow collar and her noticeable orangey bottom. As her English name suggests, this is a spring specialist. The queens started to appear last month, followed by the female workers, and this month you may see both males and female workers. You can tell them apart because the males have much more yellow facial hair, like the one above.
• The huge, 22mm Red-tailed bumblebee (Bombus lapidarius) queens are one of our biggest bumblebees and without doubt one of the most striking with here black body and fiery red bottom. Although widespread, I’ve not seen one for a long time. The books say she is partial to blossom of sallow (willow) and prunus (cherries and plum) trees. I find the smaller, yellow-faced males are easier to see later in the summer.

Queen bumblebees may have nested (most underground in old rodent holes, under paving slabs, garden sheds, or even in compost bins) by now and laid their eggs, and some, like the Early bumblebee, may even have produced worker bees who are out collecting nectar and pollen to take home to their queen and her developing colony. Now is a crucial month to help them collect sufficient pollen to feed the larvae in the nest that will develop into new workers. We can do help best by planting pollen-rich spring flowers.

How to help them:

1. Leave a patch of the garden wild for nesting sites and don’t disturb a nesting site if you find one (it will only last until the end of the summer).
2. Put up a blue tit box for the tree bumblebee to nest in after the chicks have fledged.
3. Plant dead-nettles, clover, forget- me-nots, rosemary, wallflowers and more to provide food this month for the short-tongued and long-tongued bumblebees.
4. Sow seeds inside now to create more flowers later in the summer. Sweet peas, sunflowers, cosmos and Anise hyssop are some of the easiest to grow. Try growing on a heated mat until the seeds germinate.
5. Don’t mow the lawn (let clovers and dandelions flower) and ditch the weed killers and pesticides.
6. It’s still cold in the mornings or at night, or when the sun goes in, so bumblebees can get chilled and easily exhausted. The best way to help is to put them on a flower, or as a last resort a teaspoon of sugar, water solution. But they can rest for 45 minutes. So give them time. But please don’t feed them honey, it harbours bacteria that is bad for them.

These are the six most common solitary bee species this month: ,  Tawny mining bee, Buffish mining bee, Red mason bee, Orange-tailed mining bee (female pictured), Gooden’s nomad, Hawthorn mining bee, and Hairy-footed flower bees (female pictured),

How to ID them:

• The Tawny mining bee (Andrena fulva ) is easy to spot as she burrows up through lawns, her foxy-coloured coat strikingly visible against the green grass. And she leaves a tiny volcano-looking mound of soil in her wake. Like all mining bees, many will emerge from the same burrow or next door burrows in large aggregations.
• The Buffish mining bee (Andrena nigroaenea) is around 10mm -13mm with a dense brown pile on the top of its thorax (just below it’s head) a bit like a mane. Look at the flowers on blossoming trees and shrubs such as fruit trees, willows, and blackthorn, and wildflowers like dandelions, hawk’s-beards, buttercups and spurges. If you see a bee that at first you may think is a honeybee, take a closer look. If it is a smaller. slimmer and browner, chances are it’s one of the many brown mining bees out at this time, of which the Buffish is one of the most common, along with Gwynne’s (Andrena bicolor) and the Short-fringed (Andrena dorsata) mining bee. Don’t worry if you can’t ID them, the fact that you are looking closely is good. The latter two have two generations in one season, so if you don’t spot them in the spring, you may see the next lot in late summer instead.
• Red mason bees are checking out of bee hotels now by chewing through the mud-plugged tubes. They are a little smaller (7-10mm) than a honey bee (9-10mm), more gingery and have a rounder bottom. The males appear a couple of weeks before the females and congregate around the bee hotels waiting to pounce when the females emerge. The best way to tell a male from a female is that he has white whisker-like hair on his face and longer antennae and is a bit slimmer.
• Orange-tailed mining bee (Andrena haemorrhoa) females have now emerged after the smaller, drabber males. The 11-13mm females should be easier to spot because of the neat brick-red pile on their thorax. They do have a tiny orange tip on their bottom. Try looking for them foraging on tree fruits, dandelions and spurge. They will fly until July so don’t give up if you don’t see them this month. Like all mining bees, they burrow into the ground to nest, and they collect pollen on their hairs on their hind legs.
• Gooden’s nomad bee (Nomada goodenianna) looks more like a common wasp, than a bee but it’s a cleptoparasite, or cuckoo bee. There are 34 Nomada species in the UK (850 worldwide), and this is one of the most common. She is much easier to ID than the small, brown mining bees which are her host. So if you see her, you know that the mining bees in the underground nest she is hovering around are either Grey-patched (Andrena nitida) or Buffish mining bees(Andrena nigroaenea). So if you see lots of Gooden’s nomad bees, it means that the host bees, whose home they break into and lay their eggs, are alive and healthy. (Worldwide, a quarter of the 20,000 recorded bee species are cuckoos).
• Hawthorn mining bee (Andrena chrysosceles) is another small (9-11mm), cute brown mining bee not easily distinguishable from many others! It has orangey coloured hind legs, a shiny blackish, striped abdomen and a brown, hairy thorax, Despite its common name, it feeds on a lot more than hawthorn blossom – dandelions, blackthorn, buttercups and spring-flowering shrubs.
• Hairy-footed flower bees (Anthophora plumipes) are often mistaken for bumblebees because of their round, fluffy appearance, but they live alone (not in colonies). At this time of year gangs of brown-coloured males are clearly visible chasing the more striking black females among the lungwort (pulmonaria), wallflowers and alkanet with their long, straw-like tongues (proboscis) outstretched. It is mating season.

TIP How do you to tell a Gooden’s and a wasp apart? Gooden’s are usually flying low looking for the nest of a mining bee or even walking around on the ground. And they won’t bother you.

How to help solitary bees:

1. Plant lungwort, wallflowers, comfrey and flowering currants for long-tongued Hairy footed flower bees. Flowering fruit trees, willows, spurges, alkanet and forget-me-nots for mining bees and Red mason bees.
2. Leave old mortar untouched as Hairy-footed flower bees may be nesting here. Or make some cob bricks that they can nest in instead.
3. Install bee-hotels in a warm location at least a metre off the ground, ideally facing south, where Red mason bees can check-in and lay their eggs this month and next. We’ve made our own bee hotels that we fill with either cardboard tubes or bamboo. The cardboard tubes can be removed in the winter and put in a cool, dry shed to protect them from the elements and the bee hotel can be cleaned and new tubes installed.
4. Leave a patch of loose, bare earth for mining bees to burrow and where Red mason bees can collect soil to plug their nests.
5. Create a bank of sand or a mound of sand in a sunny spot for mining bees to nest in.
6. Let dandelions and alkanet grow – they are very important early bee food. Research shows there is a hungry gap for bee in March-April, so these good sources of nectar and pollen are more vital than ever.

For information on the honey bee (Apis mellifera) and the bee-fly (Bombylius major) see Bees to See in March blog here.