The JULY POLLINATOR PARTY
The pollinator party attracted some 200 visitors over the course of a wet Saturday: a phenomenal turnout for a dreary day! They came from Farrington but also from as far as Chelwood, Chew Magna, Wells and Frome.
You can take our survey for the event here
Greeted by a village hall bedecked with 450 plants, many of the children (and their parents) got stuck in right away to building bug boxes to encourage and support garden wildlife. Once assembled, the boxes were stuffed full of bamboo canes and pine cones and we hope they are now happily nestled. But if they’re not…
BUG BOXES
To find the ideal spot for your bug box, go into your garden and look in the shadows, find the coolest, darkest place that has lots of cover. The inside wants to stay dry, so choose a place that is protected from wind and rain. Ideally, the bug hotel should be placed at around 1.5m high, facing south – so the nesting aid gets the most sun – and near plants.
Many insects pollinate plants when they move around your garden or in the wild – flies, beetles, ladybirds and even the dreaded wasps! Although they are more concerned with finding nectar, many insects will carry pollen around with them as they go from plant to plant.
Giving these Insects a home can help your garden to prosper and help the conservation of vital wildlife. Gardens can flourish as these insects’ hotels will house pollinating bees, attract ladybirds and lacewings, both of which are natural aphid & greenfly (garden pests) predators.
Bugs & Bees
Solitary Bees
Ladybirds
Lacewings
Other Invertebrates
Where they go
Bamboo Tubes
Wood shavings
Columns and tubes
Acorns and pine cones
When to expect
Spring / Summer
Winter
Winter
All year round
Ellie Jarvis gave the opening talk. She is a PhD researcher at the University of Bath’s Milner Centre for Evolution and, together with her colleague, first year PhD student Bethany Teale, she described why pollinators are so important and the huge impact of their decline over the last 45 years:
· Bee and hoverfly species have declined by 25%
· The cost to UK crops is estimated to cost £188million per year!
· Somerset holds a diverse bee population with 12 of 23 most at-risk species in the UK
She showed how to make seed bombs (CAUTION: very messy but fun!) and all the ways in which people and organizations are helping to reverse the pollinator decline.
Her presentation slides are available, along with a helpful handout to encourage you to spot pollinators in your garden or when you are out on a walk. Just email and you will be sent a copy.
BIODIVERSITY PRESENTATION
Cathy Edge from Somerset Beekeepers gave a fascinating talk about bees and how they live, starting with a history of hive design from the Egyptians to the present day. The design matters because that’s how the Queen and the workers are kept separate, with the Queen laying eggs while the workers make the honey. She explained that most bees – around 90% - are not very social but solitary. She also brought along a wonderful demonstration hive where everyone could look inside a hive – safely (though she also warned that if the glass broke, the hall would have to be evacuated immediately. Fortunately, that didn’t occur!)
BEES, BEES & HORNETS
This summer has seen a lot of bee swarms. This is when bees leave a hive in search of a new home. When one finds a promising location, that bee reports back and others go to check it out. When the bees agree, they all move together and found a new colony. There is a somewhat terrifying short video here that shows how this happens. Swarms can be anything between 30,000 to 50,000 bees – or, in some case, half a million!
If a swarm comes to your garden, contact Somerset Bee Keepers; don’t try to deal with it unless you are already an experienced bee keeper. And if you find a bee in your chimney, call pest control – and brace yourself for a large bill.
Cathy also raised the issue of Asian hornets, which can be mistaken for bees. They arrived inadvertently in France in 2004 and they are a significant predator of honey bees. That’s why it is essential to keep them out. The Asian hornet is a alien invasive species and, to date, there have been occasional sightings in the UK every year since 2016. This year, there have already been 29 sightings - so keep your eyes open!
The most striking feature of the Asian hornet is the yellow ends of its legs. Also, the European hornet is yellow when seen from above, whereas the Asian hornet’s head is dark. You can use this app to identify it.
The nice native European hornet is a valued and important part of our wildlife, and queens and nests of this species should not be destroyed.
One further note on bees: more honey is sold in the world than there are bees to produce it. This means that much that is sold as honey is not. Support your local bee keepers by buying local honey – then you can be sure it really IS honey!
You can take our survey for the event here
Rain notwithstanding, Helena Crouch led two much-loved nature walks to St. John’s Churchyard. According to her, this is one of the best looked after, biodiverse churchyards she has seen in Somerset. That’s because it is clearly tidy and cared for—but not at the expense of the whole range of creatures and plants that live there. Everyone learned a lot about the wildflowers growing in the yard and their contribution to the village’s biodiversity; they also commented that it’s useful to know what the wild plants are, to understand that they aren’t scruffy: they have a job we need them to do, but we must let them be able to do it!
GUIDED NATURE WALKS
The BBC is justly famous for its amazing cinematography of big animals all over the world: lions, tigers, polar bears, elephants and sharks. hunting, chasing, lazing, giving birth and dying. But what about insects like pollinators? That was George Chan’s question, arguing that it’s all very well focusing on the big beasts, but what about the tiny ones?
George is a zoologist and wildlife filmmaker and he argued that wildlife documentaries present a diverse, but biased, portrayal of the natural world because they mostly focus on vertebrates, (81% of mentions) rather than invertebrates (17.9% of mentions) – even though the beasts constitute just 3.4% of species, compared with invertebrates which are 74.9% of living creatures!
It’s these little animals that actually run the world – and without them, we’d be sunk. According to naturalist E.O. Wilson, “The truth is that we need invertebrates but they don’t need us! If human beings were to disappear tomorrow, the world would go on with little change, but if invertebrates were to disappear, I doubt that the human species could last more than a few months!”
So we should AND CAN know more – and do more.
BBC NATURAL HISTORY UNIT
