South Gower Cliffs - Gower - page 94

More intensive surveys at Horton over recent years have shown that it continues to support a nation-
ally important community of bees, including a nomad cuckoo bee Nomada fucata at one of its few loc-
ations in Glamorgan and long-horned eucera Eucera longicornis. There are also large colonies of long-
horned eucera at the Sands and Fall Bay, with smaller populations scattered elsewhere. The south Gower
coast may therefore be one of the most important British localities for this declining bee. The speciality
of the Horton area, however, is a solitary mining bee, Andrena hattorfiana. Both males and females are
the same size as worker honeybees, but are much darker. It was first reported in 1854 from Clyne Wood
and there was evidently a colony established here as the associated cleptoparasite Nomada armata was
alsocollectedatthesametime.ItseemsunlikelythatthelatterstilloccursinWales,butastheminingbee
has recently been rediscovered here it would be worth surveying suitable localities along the coast. There
were no further records of Andrena hattorfiana after 1854 until Hallett caught several females at Llan-
gennith in 1921. After another long period without records P. M. Pavett collected two males on limestone
grassland at Horton in 1993 and the species was also present there in 1995. The bee is dependent on the
pollen ofsmall scabious as the sole source offoodforits overwintering larvae in their underground nests.
Unfortunately the plant is extremely palatable to grazing animals and they often eat all the flowers.
The dotted bee-fly Bombylius discolor (Fig. 49) is mostly restricted in Wales to the short stretch of
coast between Port-Eynon and Penmaen Burrows, with records from Horton Cliff, Overton Cliff and
Overton Mere. This large species is easily distinguished by the spots on its wings and is on the wing from
late March to mid-June, with numbers peaking in April. The bee-fly declined substantially in Britain dur-
ing the 1960s and 1970s, mainly as a result of changing agricultural practices that destroyed its nesting
sitesandsuitableflowers,althoughtherewasalimitedrevivalin1996and1997inresponsetoasequence
of hot summers. One of the best places to find the insect is on the cliff slopes a short distance to the east
ofHortonvillage.Littleiscurrentlyknownaboutthisspecies,althoughitappearstobeaparasiteofsome
of the larger mining bees, probably Andrena flavipes , which are active in the spring. What is clear is that
the bee-fly can only flourish in areas, such as the Gower coast, where large congregations of nesting bees
are present.