Aculeate Hymenoptera from vane traps at Combermere Park, Cheshire

Combermere Park is set in the privately owned 450 ha Combermere Abbey estate on the Cheshire/Shropshire border, established almost 900 years ago. Away from the abbey, estate buildings and formal gardens, the area includes extensive wood pasture and parkland with a lake. The parkland supports a remarkable number of veteran and ancient and ancient trees in open situations, with an older average age than perhaps any other site in the Lancashire and Cheshire region. The lake, Comber Mere, and surrounding land, is a designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), for its swamp and fenland habitat, and as an important area for overwintering birds.

‘Lady of the mere’ – one of the largest trees in the park with a girth of 8.7m

In 2022, The Tanyptera Project carried out vane trapping on 13 trees within the parkland, from April to October. The survey’s focus was saproxylic insects, i.e. species associated with dead and decaying wood. However, along with the target taxa, a number of other taxa were incidentally caught. Amongst them aculeates, which were separated out, identified, recorded, and submitted to iRecord.

There were nine survey periods within this time, involving trap collection and resetting. In order to be representative of the site, the traps were located mostly on Oak trees, but also with one each on lime, willow and sweet chestnut. The highest number of individual aculeate specimens were caught in trap 12 on sweet chestnut (see below), the majority of which were ground-nesting mining bees. Trap one (see below), attached to a woodland edge oak with bramble scrub at its base caught the greatest number of species (19), and the trap on an open growing willow also caught several species (12) (see below).

Trap 12 – on a sweet chestnut, which caught the largest numbers of aculeate hymenoptera

Trap one – on a woodland edge oak where largest number of species of Aculeate Hymenoptera were caught.

Trap 7 – an open-growing willow where 12 aculeate species were caught

In all, 37 species of aculeate were caught, including 15 bees (Apidae) and 22 predatory wasps, of various genera. One, Andrena helvola, the Coppice Mining Bee, was present in high numbers, despite having been only infrequently recorded in Cheshire previously. Whilst found in a variety of habitats, it is particularly found in woodland clearings, along with two other species also found in the vane traps, Andrena fucata and Andrena synadelpha. Andrena helvola is known to visit Wood Spurge, Field Maple and Hawthorn, and with these other two species, is most frequently found in May and June. The only other previous record in Cheshire was found in a vane trap survey of Dunham Massey in 2021 by The Tanyptera Project.

One Crabronid wasp, Crossocerus binotatus, which only seems to have been recorded a few times in Cheshire previously was also caught in vane traps by the project at Tatton Park in 2021. This was considered Nationally Scarce (Notable B) by Falk in 1991, although aculeate statuses within the UK are currently being reviewed and updated. However, it is not a particularly common species with few records north of Lancashire. It typically nests in burrows in dead wood and timber.

*Crossocerus* *binotatus* from a Combermere Park vane trap

Crossocerus walkeri was also found, and this appears to be the first record of this species in Cheshire. Another dead-wood nesting Crabronid wasp, it stocks its nest with mayflies, and was also assessed as Nationally Scarce (Notable b) in 1991.

Several of the species are represented by very few previous records in Cheshire: Passoloecus corniger and P. insignis, Psenulus pallipes, and Stigmus pendulus. These are all Crabronid wasps, which stock their nests with aphids, and use the holes of wood-boring beetles in dead wood to make their nests. All except Passoloecus corniger have also been recorded using hollow stems.

An infrequently-recorded ground-nesting mining bee in Cheshire, Lasioglossum lativentre, which has only been recorded in the last few years in a few locations in Cheshire, was present, and is near the northern edge of its range within the UK.

Chrysis terminata is a species for which there are few records nationally; however, it has recently been split from Chrysis ignita agg., and is thought to be a frequently-occurring species.