Oak Mining Bee (Andrena ferox)
Key Details
| Taxonomic Groups: | Invertebrate > insect - hymenopteran > Bee |
| Red List Status: | (Not Relevant) [(not listed)(nr)] |
| D5 Status: | |
| Section 41 Status: | (not listed) |
| Taxa Included Synonym: | (none) |
| UKSI Recommended Name: | Andrena ferox |
| UKSI Recommended Authority: | Smith, F., 1847 |
| UKSI Recommended Qualifier: | (none specified) |
| Red List Citation: | (not listed) |
| Notes on taxonomy/listing: | Classified as Endangered (RDB1) in the Red Data Book (Shirt, 1987) and by Falk (1991). |
Criteria
| Question 1: | Does species need conservation or recovery in England? |
| Response: | Yes |
| Justification: | Always rare in England and also across Europe. The number of sites is declining. Under-recording may be an issue, with the bees spending much of their time high in the tree canopy. Communal nesting may make nesting activity hard to spot. |
| Question 2: | Does recovery/ conservation depend on species-specific actions? |
| Response: | Yes |
| Justification: | To a moderate extent. Genetically diverse oak woodland with an open canopy may be necessary to provide a long period of pollen production, on which the bees forage. |
| Question 3: | At a landscape scale, would the species benefit from untargeted habitat management to increase habitat mosaics, structural diversity, or particular successional stages? |
| Response: | Yes |
| Justification: | Provided there is a high genetic diversity of oak trees, which would flower at slightly different times, to prolong the period within which foraging is possible. Deconiferisation of ancient woodland followed by coppicing the understorey may provide suitable conditions for oak standards to flower and creating warm ground conditions for nesting. |
Species Assessment
| Current step on the Species Recovery Curve (SRC): | 6. Recovery solutions trialled |
| Recovery potential/expectation: | Low - Life history factor/s |
| National Monitoring Resource: | Opportunistic - sufficient |
| Species Comments: | The autecology of the bee is broadly understood, so the next step is to put theory into practice. Any oak tree planting now would take decades before those trees are shedding significant levels of pollen. |
Key Actions
Key Action 1
Proposed Action: Promote the need for genetically diverse oaks within new tree planting schemes to prolong the season during which oak pollen is available.
Action targets: 6. Recovery solutions trialled
Action type: Education/awareness raising
Duration: >10 years
Scale of Implementation: Not applicable
High priority sites: Within current range of Andrena ferox
Comments: There will be a very long lead in time between planting oaks and them yielding pollen, so sympathetic planting should be a priority to "get the ball rolling". Costs to planting schemes should be a negligible increase, other than economy of scale, sourcing stock from several different sources.
Key Action 2
Proposed Action: Evaluate habitat conditions of sites formerly used by Andrena ferox to ascertain species specific requirements and to inform work in action 3
Action targets: 6. Recovery solutions trialled
Action type: Status survey/review
Duration: 1 year
Scale of Implementation: ≤ 20 sites
High priority sites: All sites where the bee used to occur but does not now.
Comments: Assessing the habitat conditions at former sites may allow remedial actions to be identified now that habitat requirements are better understood.
Key Action 3
Proposed Action: Implement remedial habitat management at former sites within the current range of the species. This could include scrub removal to increase insolation to ground layer, thinning dense tree canopy, or re-stocking with new oak trees
Action targets: 7. Best approach adopted at appropriate scales
Action type: Habitat management
Duration: >10 years
Scale of Implementation: ≤ 20 sites
High priority sites: Sites where the bee has not been recorded for at least 30 years.
Comments: Scale is difficult to quantify until the results of Action 2 are known.
Acknowledgment:
Data used on this website are adapted from Threatened species recovery actions 2025 baseline (JP065): Technical report and spreadsheet user guide (Natural England, 2025). Available here.