Ahead of the peak season for insect activity,Steven Falk shares a roll call of recent additions to Britain’s list of bees and the intriguing stories behind their discovery.
November 2015 saw publication of the Bloomsbury Field Guide to the Bees of Great Britain and Ireland (Falk & Lewington 2015). It was the first full treatment of British bees since Saunders (1896), a tome which also covered ants and hunting wasps, but it was only the second comprehensive guide to British bees alone, the first being the 1902 Monograqphia apum Angliae by William Kirby, a Suffolk priest (1759–1850).