Ophrys apifera (bee orchid)

Native to Europe, where it occurs In Great Britain, Ireland and the Mediterranean eastwards to the Caucasus, across Turkey to northern Iran, the Middle East and North Africa. In Britain the bee orchid is found as far north as County Durham and Cumbria, but it is more abundant in the south and east. It is scattered throughout Ireland, but here it has declined since the 1930s as a result of the ploughing of grasslands.

The minute seeds are produced in thousands and can blow several kilometres, so bee orchids can appear unexpectedly, especially in exposed ground such as on road cuttings, quarries and other industrial sites, often on chalk or limestone soil (although not exclusively so).

The tubers are rounded. The leaves are mainly in a basal rosette, which appears in the autumn. The stems are up to 50 cm tall, with usually around six (but up to 14) flowers. The sepals are pink or whitish and are 12–16 mm long. The petals are narrow, green or purplish, velvety and 5 mm long. The lip is three-lobed. The lateral lobes form hairy cones. The middle lobe is pointed and bent backwards to form the rounded body of the ‘bee’, and is brown with a dark, angular u-shape outlined in yellow.

Hand-coloured engraving of Ophrys apifera by William Curtis after a watercolour by William Kilburn (1777) taken from Flora Londinensis (Image: RBG Kew)

Curtis’s Botanical Magazine (Editor: Martyn Rix) provides an international forum of particular interest to botanists and horticulturists, plant ecologists and those with a special interest in botanical illustration.

Now well over two hundred years old, the Magazine is the longest running botanical periodical featuring colour illustrations of plants. Each four-part volume contains 24 plant portraits reproduced from watercolour originals by leading international botanical artists. Detailed but accessible articles combine horticultural and botanical information, history, conservation and economic uses of the plants described.

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The number of species of bee orchids (Ophrys species) that exist in Europe has been much-debated, and was the subject of a recent project funded by the John S. Lewis Foundation, involving Kew scientists Dion Devey and Mike Fay, working alongside partners Richard Bateman and Julie Hawkins (Reading University). The team used a wide range of molecular and morphological techniques in their field study of bee orchid populations across the Mediterranean region. They could discriminate only ten species of Ophrys, even when they applied all the available diagnostic markers, and even then only six groups proved to be consistently recognisable. Morphological analyses also showed significant overlap between populations that had previously been assigned to different species. The results of these studies will help scientists to prioritise populations more effectively for conservation.

Find out more about Kew’s ‘Population Genetics of UK Orchids’ project.

Kew's Millennium Seed Bank Partnership aims to save plant life world wide, focusing on plants under threat and those of most use in the future. Seeds are dried, packaged and stored at a sub-zero temperature in our seed bank vault.

Description of seeds: The tiny seeds are wind-dispersed.
Number of seed collections stored in the Millennium Seed Bank: Two.
Germination testing: 100 % germination was achieved on sterile Norstog media, at a temperature of 21 °C, on a cycle of 12 hours of daylight/12 hours darkness.

Bee orchids have been planted in long grass alongside the path leading southwards from Main Gate at Kew. Look out for Saxifraga granulata (meadow saxifrage) and Salvia verbenaca (wild clary) in this area too, both of which are native British grassland species which have declined in numbers in the wild since the Second World War as a result of land use changes.

Alcohol-preserved and pressed and dried specimens of Ophrys apifera are held in Kew’s Herbarium, where they are available to researchers, by appointment. The details of some of these, including images, can be seen online in the Herbarium Catalogue.

An original painting of Ophrys apifera for Flora Londinensis (William Curtis, 1777), is held in the Library, Art and Archives at Kew.

Search Kew's databases for more information on this species

Find out more about orchids at Kew

The Sainsbury Orchid Conservation Project at Kew – trial plantings of Ophrys apifera

Curtis’s Botanical Magazine (Wiley-Blackwell)