Candy-stripe spider

 I found four Candy-stripe spider, Enoplognatha ovata, females guarding their lovely blue egg sacs under the lid of my garden waste bin. The spiders have probably been transferred to the bin with branches cut from some bushes, and had moved with their egg sacs to the drier lid. This one floated down from a thread of silk, and I brought it home to take her portrait on the white bowl. Another thread of silk attached the female to its egg sac, as can be seen on the following side shot:

Although these are small spiders, about half a cm long excluding the legs, they are powerful hunters, and they are able to subdue wasps, honeybees and even the aggressive Wool Carder bees, which they capture on their loose, disorganised web under flowers or leaves, where the females guard their egg sac:

Enoplognatha with its male Wool Carder Bee prey

this one with wasp

with Episyrphus balteatus hoverfly

This one hiding underneath a Feverfew flower got a honeybee

This spider shows a striking color polymorphism, which is genetically determined in a complex way. I have found the three colour forms in my garden. The abdomen can be plain pale yellow (variety lineata, top shot), yellow with two dorsolateral pink stripes (var. redimita):

or yellow with the dorsal surface of the abdomen entirely pink (var. ovata), the rarest in my garden:

In addition to the colour polymorphism the presence and number of black spots is also variable, as it can bee seen in the above photos. This species also occur on both coasts of the USA, presumably introduced from Europe. In the UK, there is a very similar species, also colour polymorphic, E. latimana, which has been recorded mostly in the south of England and it appears to be less common than E. ovata.