Have a look around your garden, especially in places where you don’t cultivate the soil. Maybe you’ve got raised beds, or herbaceous borders, or even paths and short-cut lawn areas? Look out for little piles of sandy soul with a central hole. It looks like a mini-volcano. It’s a sure sign you’ve got mining bees in your garden. Mining bees (usually Andrena spp) are solitary bees. They don’t live in a colony though they may nest in aggregation.

The mother bee makes the nest. She tunnels down into the soil and makes an intricate network of tunnels where she lays her eggs and provisions each one with a pollen-patty.

In wet and windy weather, she will close the entrance, this also helps protect the nest from predators. Look closely and you might see her cheeky face peeking out.

Different species nest for a few weeks at different times, so you might see these little mounds of soil at different times of the year and then they are gone. But they are not. Deep underground the eggs are hatching, the grubs are growing and the little pollen-patties are sustaining their growth. Then they will overwinter in the tunnels and emerge as adults next spring.