Small scabious mining bee

Alongside many other invertebrates, bees are crucial pollinators that help plant populations around the world, including those that humans need for food. Say “bee” and most people think honeys bees, but there are around 270 species of bees in the UK. They’re all important to our ecosystems, but unfortunately, some of them are not doing so well.

The small scabious mining bee (Andrena marginata) is a solitary bee that digs holes in the ground to lay their eggs in. Females of this species collect pollen from devil’s bit scabious flowers using special hairs on their legs and then put this in the nest with the eggs for their larvae to feed on when they hatch.

This species is found in south and southeast England, south Wales, and in the central Highlands of Scotland, but it has an extremely patchy distribution. This means if individual populations of small scabious mining bees become extinct, it will be impossible for bees to re-colonies from nearby. Linking up populations of this species within countries is essential to their persistence.

Our Highland Wildlife Park site is in the unusual position of being a zoo within a national park (the Cairngorms). In addition to the amazing animals in our zoo collection, we also have lots of green space that can provide habitat for some of the threatened native biodiversity found in the area…including the small scabious mining bee.  

The bee was discovered at Highland Wildlife Park in 2018 as part of our Biodiversity Action Plan work. Since then, we have conducted annual surveys and found we have a permanent nesting population. We are planting devil’s bit scabious to join up the bee’s habitat at the park and hope to eventually connect to neighbouring sites like Insh Marshes.