Eden Wild Goose Nature
Nature notes from the Focus Magazine July 2020

Buzzing

'Get Cumbria Buzzing' is the title of a project being run by Cumbria Wildlife Trust with other interested groups. It's exciting news for pollinators, from bees to butterflies to hoverflies and more as they will soon be enjoying an improved environment enriched with plants of particular benefit to them. That's also good news for all of us.
 
It's a great title and as I've spent rather more time than usual wandering around outside in a quietened world during these weeks, I have become increasingly aware of that buzzing, a low reverberation adding a bass note to the copious and much commented on birdsong of Spring 2020.
 
I grew up thinking there were bumble bees and honey bees, but recently I've been learning a bit more. In the UK there's the much loved honey bee, about twenty four species of bumblebee, seven of them regular visitors to our gardens, and around two hundred and fifty kinds of solitary bees- not all of whom are solitary! This latter group don't live in hives but nest underground, in old beetle nests, sandy cliffs, in the crumbling mortar of an old wall, in hollow plant stems, to name just a few possibilities.

Earlier this year I bought a bee house, composed of hollow bamboo poles, massed together. I followed the advice regarding positioning and hoped that some kinds of solitary bees, that are reasonably easy to attract, might move in. It's been fascinating to watch how, one by one, the bamboo stems have been examined and inhabited. Bees are not known as busy for nothing... these kinds line a tube with wet mud, deposit some collected pollen, lay an egg, seal the tube with more mud, then start the process again, until the tube is full. The entrance is then sealed with more mud and the eggs develop into grubs who fatten up on the pollen left by their mum. After several months, in the following spring, the mature bees hatch and start their own life cycle.
 
I've been able to observe some of this process, and seen how most of the tubes have been occupied and blocked off. Now the waiting begins. It's entertaining and educational  for me, but the best thing we can all do to really help bees is to create bee friendly, flower-full, pesticide-free open spaces, gardens, window boxes or whatever we can manage. Visit getcumbriabuzzing to learn more.
 
Philippa Skinner