A new Essex record of the Yellow Loosestrife Bee Macropis europaea
substance. This may help ensure constant humidity inside the cell and also prevent water entering
the nest, especially in winter when nesting areas may become flooded. Nests are excavated in banks
and slopes, their entrance sometimes concealed below overhanging vegetation. Higher ground above
the summer water table will probably prove to be essential for nesting, but few British nests have
been encountered. A small and scattered aggregation of nests has been found on a sparsely vegetated
peaty slope beside a footpath bordering a fen compartment (Falk 1991) and a solitary nest in a gentle
slope of dry earth, about fifty yards from marshy ground (Phipps 1948).
Yellow Loosestrife is a very attractive plant that usually occurs beside rivers, canals, lakes or in bogs
and fens. In the Flora of Essex (Jermyn 1974) the plant is described as rare and twelve localities are
listed. However it seems to have declined considerably since, and it is considered lost to north-east
Essex by Tarpey & Heath (1990). Yellow Loosestrife docs not appear to have been recorded in the
vicinity of Orsett Fen, and a visit by the second author in 1996 to the area where Colin Plant had
recorded the bee in 1984 was not at all hopeful. Virtually the whole area seems to consist of arable
land with ditches alongside tracks and fields. There was no sign of any Yellow Loosestrife. However
in the past, when they were still fen-commons, the Orsett and Bulphan Fens in Thurrock must have
been a very interesting area indeed for wildlife. The New Naturalist Common Lands of England and
Wales (Hoskins & Stamp 1963) describes them as low-lying areas so ill-drained as to constitute fen
or marsh of little value or interest, commons with little appeal aesthetically and of little use for
recreation, but which could by drainage be converted into good agricultural land. The commons
must have been drained and turned into arable land soon after this in the 1960s. Nowadays we can
only wonder at what wildlife habitat must have been lost. The bee has probably always been very
rare in Essex but the decline of Yellow Loosestrife means that it is clearly vulnerable in the county.
Every effort should be made to preserve known Yellow Loosestrife sites and manage them, to increase
stands of the plant and provide suitable nesting habitat for the bec.
Finding this important bee on its obligate forage resource has been acknowledged by the rangers
responsible for managing Walthamstow Marsh, and attention will be paid to monitoring the Lysimachia
and the bee to ensure the plant is able to flower freely, without too much competition. The correct
edaphic conditions will also be maintained or enhanced on the site.
References
BURTON, R.M. (1983) The Flora of the London Area. LNHS.
FALK, S. (1991) A review of the scarce and threatened bees, wasps and ants of Great Britain. NCC,
Peterborough.
HARVEY, R (1996) Second Essex record for the rare bee Macropis europaea. Essex Field Club Newsletter
19: 2.
HOSKINS, W.Cl & STAMP, L.D. (1963)77*e Common Lands of Eng/and and Wales. Collins New
Naturalist, London.
EDWARDS, R. (ed.) (1998) Provisional Atlas of the Aculeate Hymenoptera of Britain and Ireland Part 2.
Institute of Terrestrial Ecology, Huntingdon.
JERMYN, S.T. (1974) Flora of Essex. Essex Naturalists' Trust, Colchester.
NICHOLSON, C. (1928) Notes on the solitary bees and wasps of Essex. Essex Naturalist 22 (2): 81-95.
PHIPPS, J. (1948) The nest of Macropis labiata (F.) (Hym., Apidae). Entomologist's Monthly Magazine 84: 56.
TARPEY, T. & HEATH, J. (1990) Wild Flowers of North East Essex. Colchester Natural History Society,
Colchester.
Essex Naturalist (New Series) 18 (2001)
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