43
The author intends to provide guidance for Osmia rufa
the identification of some target species in
future Essex Field Club Newsletters (ISSN
1446-562X), but the receipt of specimens
through the post is always welcome provided
specimens (dead or alive!) are accompanied by
locality and date data.
New records of interest
Hymenoptera records of particular interest for
1997-1998 were reported in the last Essex
Naturalist. Examination of new material has
resulted in more records of interest and these,
together with a summary of new county records
made or confirmed during 1998 are detailed
below.
New county records
Chrysididae (ruby-tailed wasps)
Cleptes nitidulus - Nationally Scarce (Na). Collected by the author at Barking PFA lagoons
between 9th Augusti September 1998.
Hedychridium roseum - taken at Tiptree Heath by Adrian Knowles on the 14th July 1998.
Pompilidae (spider-hunting wasps)
Evagetes dubius - Nationally Scarce (Nb). The last recorder report (Harvey 1998) refers to a
specimen of Evagetes collected and provisionally identified by Roger Payne from Broom Hill
(West Tilbury) as Evagetes dubius but subsequently reassessed. The specimen has now turned
up and the original determination has been verified by expert examination. The record of E.
dubius shown for Essex at TQ67 in Edwards (1997) therefore stands and the species is recorded
for the first time in the county.
Sphecidae (sphecid wasps)
Nitela sp. A single female collected in the author's garden in Grays on the 1st September 1998.
The taxonomy of the three species found in Britain is still unresolved but whichever species is
involved this is new to the county.
Xylocopidae (carpenter bees)
Xylocopa sp. probablv violacea - A single specimen collected dead at Bully Point Nature
Reserve (Lea Valley Regional Park) on the 29th August 1998 (Miller 1999).
Records of particular interest or importance
A female of the mining bee Andrena angustior collected by Adrian Knowles at Warley Park
Golf Club this year on the 11th May 1998 remains the first recent record for Essex.
The first records in the county for a hundred years of the Nationally Vulnerable RDB2
cuckoo bee Sphecodes spinulosus were made in 1998. Males were present in large numbers al
Star Lane Brick Pits on the 14th and 20th May 1998 and at Little Wakering on the 20th May 1998
and Adrian Knowles collected a female at Warren Farm Pit East (near Stanway. Colchester) on
the 21st May 1998. The bee is a cleptoparasite of the Nationally Scarce mining bee Lasioglossum
xanthopum a species rare in the county and usually associated with old flower-rich grasslands.
Essex holds nationally important populations of the priority National Biodiversity Action
Plan species the Shrill carder bee Bombus sylvarum (see paper in this Naturalist). In 1998 the
bee was seen in numbers at Wat Tyler Country Park where the author first discovered it in 1993
and a new population was discovered in 1998 at Benfleet Downs Country Park.
Essex Naturalist (New Series) 16 (1999)