Tilcayo Cats:British Bees
British Bees is a Tilcayo Cats Originals project to build accurate, readable accounts of bees recorded in Great Britain. Species absent from English Wikipedia are the first priority; weak existing coverage can also be improved through original research-based writing.
Read the published originals · Browse bee articles · Full coverage record
Scope and progress
The starting inventory was checked on 8 October 2026 against this revision of Wikipedia's list. It contains 271 named entries: 270 species-level entries and one subspecies. Of those entries, 126 had no English Wikipedia destination page after redirects were resolved. These are baseline page-existence counts, not a claim that every other article is complete or accurate.
The list is a starting point, not a taxonomic authority. Names, synonyms, historical records, introductions and uncertain occurrences are checked against specialist sources before publication. Great Britain and the United Kingdom are not identical geographical scopes; records from Ireland and the Channel Islands must be labelled separately.
The first three original accounts are published. The remaining entries are recorded as unresearched, not as completed imports or as species for which a good article is impossible. There is no claim yet that overall coverage exceeds Wikipedia's.
Editorial standard
- Aim for B-Class or better in substance: supported facts, reasonable breadth, a useful lead, clear sections and readable explanations. A species account normally needs identity and distinguishing features, range, British records, habitat, life cycle, feeding and a properly dated conservation assessment where one exists.
- Give a lower grade when coverage is incomplete; record why. Do not pad a poorly documented species with general statements about bees, invented threats, assumed pollination value or unsupported extinction claims.
- Use scientific papers, specialist identification works and recording schemes. Separate what was observed from what an author inferred. A flower visit is not automatically evidence of pollen collection or effective pollination.
- Date conservation assessments and distinguish local status from national or global status. Keep geographical limits on field studies visible.
- Compose original prose. Do not lightly paraphrase an existing encyclopaedia or copy protected descriptions, illustrations or maps.
- All original articles belong in Category:TC:ORIGINALS, in TC:ORIGINALS, and in an appropriate subject category.
The grading guide is Wikipedia's content assessment. Tilcayo assessments are local editorial judgements, not Wikipedia B-Class, Good Article or Featured Article awards.
Coverage controls
Each title has one row in the coverage record. Research, drafting, publication and verification are separate states. A title counts as delivered only after its saved article, references, category and originals-index entry have been checked. Original pages must not be overwritten by an import or sent back through an import loop.
Starting sources
- Bees, Wasps & Ants Recording Society: species accounts, identification material and recording information. Check the date of each account.
- Else, Bolton and Broad (2016), Checklist of British and Irish Hymenoptera – aculeates. Useful for names and country-level records at publication; later changes need checking.
- Palaearctic Osmiine Bees, Andreas Müller's specialist catalogue, for the relevant bee groups.
- Research papers cited in the individual articles, including later work that corrects older accounts.