Thanks for sharing! Glad you like them 😊

Thank you! It’s based on a real photo of a friend’s cat called Penny :)

For anyone not familiar with the lino carving/printing process, this is what it looks like… 1. Draw design 2. Carve design out of printing block 3. Apply ink to the block 4. Carefully push the inked block onto printing paper 5. Repeat, mount, and package!

In contrast, Ivy Bees are solitary, don’t live in colonies, and don’t have queens or workers. The bee pictured here is a female who is independently collecting pollen for her own brood. She has no help in this process, even from the male she mated with.

Honeybees live in colonies with queens and workers. The one pictured here is a female worker who will be collecting pollen to provision the queen’s brood. Thousands of other workers will be out collecting pollen for the same brood. These workers do not reproduce themselves.

The best ways to tell them apart are that the Ivy Bee has very clear sharp bands of bright yellow on its abdomen; the Honeybee has hairy eyes while the Ivy Bee has smooth.

They are around the same size, and you can see a lot of both species foraging together on the ivy at this time of the year (see the second image).

Some bee species can look very similar but be completely different behaviourally. 🐝 The Ivy Bee and the Honeybee are good examples of this. If you’re not looking closely you might not realise they are different… 🧵👇

There are lots of them in my house at the moment! Though admittedly not quite this many 😊

Ivy is great for wildlife, especially as a source of nectar and pollen in autumn when not much else is flowering.

Face to face with an Ivy Bee (Colletes hederae).

Here is a female Ivy Bee (Colletes hederae) trying to collect ivy nectar and pollen but being bombarded by males wanting to mate with her. She seems pretty good at kicking them away and carrying on!

Very happy to photograph this bee species for the first time: Bronze Furrow Bee (Halictus tumulorum).

Currently petsitting these guys.

Eclipse in the sun glare over Oxford 🌙

I’ve been pretty ill this week with a mystery virus but I managed to pull myself together just in time to take my colander for a nice trip to the park😎

Red Admiral butterfly (Vanessa atalanta).

I think that this mason bee peering out of one of my bee hotels might be the best photo I’ve ever taken. It’s just too cute!

He likes to ‘help’ me with the gardening.