Walking with bees

I said previously that would be the last workshop for while... but I'd forgotten about the one I was helping to organise, hosted at Gatwick itself!

Possibly the first ever insect identification workshop held at Destinations Place, Gatwick's offices 

Last week we were lucky to be visited by Dr Richard Comont from the Bumblebee Conservation Trust. Another contender in the League of Pan-species Listers, Richard is an all-round ecologist and an advocate of citizen science. A large part of his works involves communicating about the native bees of the UK, particularly the bumbley variety... 

 

...so we were all here to learn about bumblebees, their recent decline in the UK and what we can do to help. A mark of how popular a workshop on bees can be is the turn out of people on the day; we had 15 people along with some having travelled impressive distances, including Cambridgeshire and the Isle of Man!! 

A-typical setting for a bee workshop

Richard's talk was in-depth and fascinating stuff, highlighting the vital role of pollinating insects for commercial farming and agriculture as well as for natural ecosystems. We learned how bees can be effective indicators of environmental change, so if something is going very wrong their populations may crash.

He also went into some detail about bumblebee life cycles... Did you know that there are cuckoo bumblebees, which look a lot like normal bumbles but live like a Cuckoo (hence the name), sneaking into other bee nests to lay their own eggs, then leaving the host colony to raise the young! I'm not sure if that's great parenting or terrible parenting.
   We also learned that is vitally important to monitor populations of common species as well as the rare, as what is common today might not be tomorrow...

In the afternoon it was a short drive over to the River Mole where it flows north of the airfield. Richard explained to us the methodology of the the BeeWalk survey, involving an hour walk along a fixed route each month, identifying and counting bumblebees then submitting the data online. This will be my BeeWalk transect for the coming summer months and we wandered along floodplain path as a group, keeping a sharp eye out for anything round and fuzzy out on the wing. 

A feisty Queen Buff-tailed (Bombus terrestris)

The great thing about bumblebees is that there is only a few species to learn (24 in the UK), but the variation within species and differences between males, queens and workers means you'll never get bored! Today's weather conditions were a little cool and breezy, so not much invertebrate activity but this made it all the more exciting whenever we spotted one! In the end we saw the following three species...

These pics were pilfered from BBCT's handy little guide 'What's that bumblebee?'

There are lots of helpful people and brilliant online resources available for beginners, such as the BeeWatch scheme. I've had a lot of fun playing around with their training tool, its very user friendly and anyone can sign up for a free account to practice honing their bumble i.d. skills.

  We found a dead specimen on the path which was an opportunity to see bumblebee features close up, such as the large, flattened hind legs for sticking pollen to and an extremely long extendible tongue for reaching into the deeper flowers.

The Bumblebee CSI team concluded no evidence of aircraft altercation

Want to get involved in bumblebee conservation? Of course you do! Click here to learn more: http://bumblebeeconservation.org/get-involved/

Thanks again to Richard and everyone who attended this day and the best of luck on your surveys!

Accumulating aculeates

I was really chuffed to have local naturalist Jeremy Early visit our sites last Thursday, staking out some possible bee and wasp 'hotspots' for surveying in the coming season. I had only recently learned the word aculeate, which is the group of invertebrates including bees, wasps and ants.

At the moment, you might be noticing a lot of pale-yellow fuzz on trees: these are the catkins of Willow or Sallow trees (Salix sp.). Before their leaves are fully open, the male trees produce catkins with copious pollen and nectar; a great food source for early invertebrates waking up from hibernation. 

Small Tortoiseshell Butterfly on Willow catkins, North West Zone

The past week or so, we had been seeing plenty of large bumblebees on the wing, but this day was comparatively quiet despite the good weather. Instead, some other niceties were out and about including Peacock and Small Tortoiseshell Butterflies. Just a few days earlier, this same Willow was frequently visited by large, sleepy queen bumblebees, newly awoken from hibernation. Here is a pic of a lovely queen Buff-tailed Bumblebee (Bombus terrestris) I had managed to net...

Buff-tailed Bumblebee queen (Bombus terrestris)

I hear that bumblebees would have to be severely provoked to sting us. Also, that the sting of queen bumbles cannot penetrate human skin, although I'd rather not test this theory!

   Over in Ashley's Field we staked out some of the flowering Blackthorn shrubs to see what would come humming by...

This type of hoverfly, called a Drone-fly (Eristalis tenax), is an excellent bee mimic

 Bee Fly (Bombylius major).
Another great mimic, this is a parasite of solitary bees and lays its eggs in their nests.

So, those were some of my pics. Here are some of Jeremy's photos from the day... They're not too bad I guess.

Peacock Butterfly (Inachis io) - Jeremy Early

Male Drone-fly (Eristalis tenax) - Jeremy Early

Small Tortoiseshell Butterfly (Aglais urticae) - Jeremy Early

As well as being a keen entomologist, Jeremy's hobby is wildlife photography and he is particularly skilled at snapping nature in-situ (as in its natural surroundings). I need to invest in a better camera!
   Tom S. and I recently met Jeremy at the Surrey Biological Recorders Seminar, where he was giving a talk about all the wildlife in his Surrey garden. We were already excited about our plans for Honeybees at Gatwick, so after his talk I made a beeline (ha!) over to him to ask about one of his slides: a photo depicting a massive bee house made out of natural materials.

Jeremy's insect boxes, aka the Bee and Wasp Hilton

Jeremy's garden has given us some great inspiration for a new volunteer project and one we can build on over time. He has many bee boxes and areas of standing deadwood to suit all manner of bees (he has recorded over 80 different species so far in his garden!). Boxes with drilled wood, bricks, bamboo canes, reeds and cardboard tubes have all proved popular with the local aculeates.

The wire mesh protects the homes of these hard-working insects from becoming a feeding station for birds such as Blue Tits and Great-spotted Woodpeckers.

The boxes have been well used since Jeremy installed them. As you can see, some of these tubes look like they have been plugged up. This is because they have been used by solitary nesting bee species such as the Red Mason (Osmia bicornis).

Jeremy and his splendid camera

You can check out more of Jeremy's photography and find out more about his incredibly absorbing book on natural history here: My Side of the Fence 

   Bees and wasps, like many invertebrates, are often overlooked and misunderstood by us. Did you know we have around 250 species of bee on the British mainland? They also play vitally important roles in ecosystems, such as pollinating flowering plants and providing food for other animals. If we ever lost them, and I don't just mean the Honeybees, we could be in quite a bit of trouble.

Many aculeates also lead fascinating and dangerous lifestyles, such as the sneaky behaviour of cuckoo bees, or the life-and-death struggle of spider-hunting wasps, all which can be seen in the British landscape. As the season goes on, I hope we can get records at Gatwick of as many different species of bee and wasp as possible.
   Find out more about Britain's bees at the Bumblebee Conservation Trust