As soon as I get a whiff of the ‘wet flour’ smell of Ivy flowers, I know to keep an eye out for my first Ivy bees (Colletes hederae).

They appeared locally back in mid September – the Bumblebee Conservation Trust says they can be seen from late August through to early November – but, after a week of anti-cyclonic gloom when we didn’t see the sun at all, and then a week of mostly wet weather, I figured I probably wouldn’t see any more this year.

Fortunately for me, I was wrong. I happened to be in the right place at the right time earlier this week when the sun came out for a couple of hours and my walk had taken me past a row of old trees, all covered in Ivy whose flowers hadn’t yet begun to form fruit.

With its furry ginger thorax and ginger-and-black-striped abdomen, Colletes hederae is such an attractive little bee that is slowly colonising the British countryside, moving ever north, since its arrival here back in 2001.