All images on this website have been taken in Leicestershire and Rutland by NatureSpot members. We welcome new contributions - just register and use the Submit Records form to post your photos. Click on any image below to visit the species page. The RED / AMBER / GREEN dots indicate how easy it is to identify the species - see our Identification Difficulty page for more information. A coloured rating followed by an exclamation mark denotes that different ID difficulties apply to either males and females or to the larvae - see the species page for more detail.

Bees, Wasps, Ants

Bees, wasps, ants and sawflies are all part of the insect order Hymenoptera.  A typical hymenopteran has 2 pairs of wings which are coupled together with tiny hooks.  Bees, wasps and ants are in the sub-Order Apocrita, with a definite waist between the thorax and abdomen. 

We have placed Sawflies in a separate gallery because they are in the sub-order Symphyta, and considered to be more primitive than other groups of the Hymenoptera. They are very different to bees, wasps and ants - one distinctive feature is that they don't have a waist. 

Whilst everyone is familiar with the social bumblebees and honeybees, these represent only about 10% of all the British bee species. The remainder are solitary bees that don't work together as a single colony to rear their young. 

There is an even greater diversity of wasps. As with the bees, there are a few social wasps that everyone is familiar with, but these represent just a small fraction of all UK wasps. Sand-wasps, Digger-wasps, Mason wasps and Potter wasps and many other species all have solitary life cycles.

Many wasps are parasitoids, attacking the immature stages of other insects and eventually killing their hosts. (A parasite lives within the host, but doesn't kill it).  Examples are Chalcids, Ichneumons and Braconids.  These are generally under-recorded species, and identification often requires the help of an expert in the group.

Ants are all social insects living in large colonies that work collaboratively.  Identification can be difficult, and several are under-recorded in our area.  Gavin Gamble has written some notes on Ant Recording and Identification to guide recorders. 

Many members of this group are difficult or impossible to identify from field images. Make sure that your images include the diagnostic features needed to make a definitive identification or get a recognised expert to confirm the identification.

Identification help

Facebook group: BWARS

Facebook group: British Ichneumons

Solitary wasps

The familiar yellow and black social wasps are the outliers for the group - the vast majority of the world’s 100,000+ wasp species are solitary. The Chalcids, Ichneumonids and Braconids are particularly species-rich. For all their great ecological importance, most species are poorly studied and many of these are extremely difficult to identify. 

Sapygidae

The Sapygidae, "club-horned wasps", are primarily cleptoparasites (or "cuckoo wasps") which do not build their own nests. Instead, they sneak into the nests of solitary bees - specifically leafcutter bees and mason bees. The Sapygid larva usually hatches before the host's egg and uses its large mandibles to destroy the host egg or young larva., then consuming the pollen and nectar that the host bee gathered for her own offspring.

Parasitoid and chalcid wasps - Chalcidoidea

Chalcid wasps (from the Latin, "chalcis" - metallic-coloured) are a very complex and species-rich group with constantly evolving taxonomy. In the UK, 1,754 recorded species were on the 2016 checklist, although this is certainly an underestimate of the total. All are endoparasitoids, the females laying eggs inside host eggs or larvae, which their larvae consume and kill. These tiny wasps often have a wide global distribution and in addition have been very widely used as biological pest control.

Chalcididae - Chalcid wasps

The family Chalcididae is a subgroup group within the superfamily Chalcidoidea. Chalcididae are generally slightly larger, sturdier and have a more "armored" appearance than other Chalcidid families. The hind femur is greatly enlarged and muscular and the hind tibiae characteristically bowed to fit snugly against the swollen femur when the leg is retracted.

Mymaridae - Fairy wasps

The fairy wasps are some of the smallest insects in the world but have been widely used in biological pest control. One North American species, Dicopomorpha echmepterygis, is only twice the width of a human hair. They are endoparasitoids on a wide range of insect hosts. One UK species, Caraphractus cinctus, lives underwater and is a parasitoid of water beetle eggs. 

Encyrtidae

A large family of tiny wasps and one of the most important for biological control. e.g. Trichogramma evanescens is used to control Clothes Moths and Encarsia formosa used to control greenhouse whitefly - these are among the few wasps you can buy on Amazon. 

Eulophidae

Eulophid wasps are endoparasites larvae, pupae and sometimes eggs of insects in over ten orders. They are major parasitoids of Leafminers (Diptera), Lepidoptera, Coleoptera, and Hemiptera. They are crucial in natural ecosystems and Integrated Pest Management (IPM) for controlling various insect pests, particularly leaf miners, beetles, and gall-formers. A few species cause plant galls.

Eurytomidae - wasps

Eurytomidae are a diverse family of small, primarily non-metallic, black or dark-colored parasitic and phytophagous wasps. They are characterized by a coarse, pitted thorax. While many are parasites of larvae hidden within plant tissues (galls, seeds, stems), a significant number are phytophagous (feeding on plants), and some are specialized predators of spider eggs.

Ormyridae - parasitic wasps

The Ormyridae are either parasitoids or hyperparasitoids on gall-forming insects, primarily cynipid wasps and tephritid flies, typically metallic or iridescent in appearance.

Pteromalidae

This is a very large and diverse family of wasps (one of the most species-rich families) of rather uncertain taxonomy, having been included in other families and split off again a number of times. Their biology is very varies and includes ectoparasitoids and endoparasitoids, hyperparasitoids and even predators that kill and consume the prey immediately; they also include fig wasp genera. 

Torymidae

A diverse family of chalcid wasps that can be easily recognized by their metallic body color, large hind coxae, and long ovipositor in females, which is used to deposit eggs onto or into their hosts. Torymidae specialize in parasitizing hosts in concealed habitats including gall-forming insects.

Ruby-tailed or Cuckoo wasps - Chrysidoidea

Chrysidids are brightly coloured metallic parasitoids and cleptoparasites of other insects (mainly other wasps), from which they get the name Cuckoo wasps. Michael Archer's Key to the Chrysid Wasps (Chrysididae) of the British Isles and the Channel Islands on avaialbe from BWARS

Chrysididae - Ruby-tailed wasps

Gall-wasps and Parasitoid wasps - Cynipoidea

Cynipidae - Gall wasps

Nearly all wasp galls in the UK are caused by wasps in the family Cynipidae, and most are on Oak, with a few on Rose and a few on other herbaceous species.   Life-cycles increase in complexity from the galls on Bramble (Diastrophus) and herbaceous species (e.g. Aulacidea, Phanacis, Liposthenes), to more complex Diplolepis, which gall roses, to the Oak gall wasps (e.g. Andricus, Cynips, Neuroterus) with the most complex life-cycles.

Oak cynipid wasps have alternating sexual/asexual generations, or ‘cyclical parthenogenesis’.  Typically, the gall formed by the females of the sexual generation appears in spring/early summer, and is on a different part of the oak to the later asexual (or agamic) generation.  In many species, the sexual galls are recorded less often than the asexual galls, which are often larger and persist longer. (An example of an exception to this is the oak-apple, Biorhiza pallida, which is the sexual gall).   Often the 2 types of gall are a very different shape, and originally some were thought to be different species; in some species, the sexual gall has not been found.  Some introduced species form sexual galls on the non-native Turkey oak and asexual galls on native oaks – e.g. Andricus kollari.  

The first generation sexual gall is produced in spring by an asexual female that lays eggs parthenogenetically, without them being fertilised by a male.  The females are of two kinds; those that lay eggs which produce male wasps, and those that produce females. From this gall, the second generation of sexual wasps emerges, both male and female; these mate, and the females then produce the asexual galls later in the year.