A lady in furs in the flower border

I bet you've noticed how the recent cool conditions have really suppressed insect activity. Gardens are not yet humming, literally.

So at least this week I was glad to find this distinctive lady roving around the Thrift blooming in my Seaside Garden.

She is an Ashy Mining Bee, Andrena cineraria, one of the most distinctive of all our 230 or so species of solitary bee.

She is about the size of a Honeybee or slightly larger, and is all black bar a fabulous ruff of grey hair at the front and back of her thorax and grey hairs on her face. She reminds me of a well-dressed Victorian lady who has donned her best thick fur stole for her venture into public.

What's more, this is quite a widespread species, found across much of England, Wales and Northern Ireland, but much patchier in Scotland with a main focus on the west coast.

If you're not familiar with the National Biodiversity Network online atlas, it is a brilliant way of checking whether a creature is found local to you. You can see the map for the Ashy Mining Bee here, helping you gauge whether you're likely to find it where you live.

As well as needing to have a good sup of nectar, the other thing solitary bees need is somewhere to lay their eggs, and in the case of the Ashy Mining Bee, your bee hotel is of no interest. The word 'mining' says it all - she is looking to go underground.

She will choose an area of bare, preferably sandy ground - including open patches in dry lawns - and dig a tunnel up to 20cm long. Inside, she will create a series of chambers along its length, each one with one egg, and provision them with nectar and pollen.

Her excavation can lead to quite a volcano of soil at the surface, but she is a diligent digger and will close off the entrance once she has finished or should it rain.

And while the term 'solitary bee' is accurate in that only she will venture down her hole, great congregations of Ashy Mining Bee queens may dig their nests alongside each other, creating quite a flurry of activity.

So, check out the NBN Atlas, look for arrays of miniature volcanoes in lawns, and keep an eye out for these super creatures hard at work, but looking so elegant and distinguished at the same time!