Country diary

Right on cue, volcanos have erupted on the edge of the city, on a patch of waste ground that was once agricultural land but has so far escaped development. The sandy soil here is perfect for colonisation by mining bees that tunnel out from underground chambers in late April, leaving symmetrical, centimetre-tall cones of soil around their exit hole. Mining bees are unsung heroes of spring, stepping into the breach left by the decline in honeybee populations and pollinating cherry, apple, pear and gooseberry blossom. The female tawny mining bee, by far the most attractive, is a honeybee-sized dusting brush of ginger fur that's particularly fond of gooseberry flowers.

As I sat and watched, one struggled out of her newly erupted cone of soil, climbed laboriously up a bramble stem, gave her wings a trial buzz and promptly fell to the ground. Complete acclimatisation to the transition from underground confinement to dazzling spring sunshine took a few more minutes, before she flew away towards wild cherries flowering around the edge of the field. Meanwhile, two males had emerged, less densely furred and easily mistaken for honeybees, and after their obligatory warm-up, they buzzed away towards a patch of dandelions, forcing their heads deep between the florets to collect nectar. Dandelion flowers set seeds without the need for pollen or pollinators by virtue of a strange natural cloning mechanism called apomixis, but nevertheless produce redundant pollen and nectar that male mining bees seem to find irresistible. Females will soon return to this site to dig new breeding chambers and lay eggs provisioned with bee bread - a paste of pollen and nectar - and then their brief lives above ground will be over for another year. As I was about to leave, their nemesis, a bee-fly, arrived, hovering over the volcanos, the downdraught from its wings blowing aside the dusty soil. This parasite drops its eggs into the newly dug tunnels, so next spring it may well be bee-flies and not mining bees that emerge.