April 2020 - Bees

I was casting round for inspiration for this month’s column and thought I’d wander out and see what was in the garden.  I almost immediately found half a dozen bees, so I’ll indulge myself with yet another column about my favourite subject.

The first bee I saw was a solitary bee – the hairy-footed flower bee, a female one to be precise. 

Female Hairy-footed Flower Bee

The Facebook groups have been full of pictures of male hairy-footed flower bees which emerge earlier than the females and they are the ones with the hairy feet.  This female was foraging on some red dead-nettle on my neglected vegetable plot and on some dwarf comfrey that is now in flower and threatening to invade the vegetable patch yet again.  Despite the meaningless name (all bees are flower bees because they all eat pollen), hairy-footed flower bees are mining bees and dig their nests underground. 

Male Hairy-footed Flower Bee - Check out those hairy feet (legs)

On the same comfrey patch I found a buff-tailed bumblebee worker – the first of the year.  She was quite small and collecting pollen which means that she was one of the first workers to emerge from the first batch of eggs laid by the queen.  In another part of the garden I found a buff-tailed bumblebee queen.  That queen was searching for a nest and so must have emerged later than the queen that founded the colony that the worker was from.  Confused? Then I’ll just quickly run through the bumblebee life cycle again.

As a bumblebee colony matures (from mid-summer to late autumn) both males and queens are produced.  Males and queens mate (preferably with ones from different colonies), the males die and the queens hibernate.  When they emerge in the spring, the queens feed themselves up on pollen and nectar to develop their ovaries, then they go looking for a nest.  Old mouse holes or bird nesting boxes that didn’t get cleaned out are perfect because bumblebees can’t dig or carry large chunks of nest material about.  When she finds a suitable nest, she makes a wax pot and fills it with nectar which will keep her energy levels up while she creates brood chambers and lays eggs in them.  The eggs hatch into larvae (the bumblebee equivalent of caterpillars), she feeds the larvae with nectar and pollen.  When big enough, the larvae pupate (pupa = chrysalis) and shortly after emerge as the first batch of workers.  Once the workers have emerged, the queen stays at home, creating brood chambers and laying eggs while the workers feed the next batch of larvae.  The colony will go through several cycles as each batch of workers emerge and the size of the workers increases each time because more workers means more food.  Eventually, the queen starts to lay male eggs as well as female eggs and the females (queens) and males will go off and start all over again.  (The original queen and any workers still alive will then die.)

Early Bumblebee Worker

I also found an Early Bumblebee Queen.  More confusion here – Early refers to the species of bumblebee – Bombus pratorum to give it its Sunday name – not necessarily to the fact that they emerge particularly early.  They are sometimes given the name Spring Bumblebee, not just because they emerge in the spring, but because the colony has a short life cycle and so the colony has ended by late spring. 

The early queen was foraging on our flowering currant bush.  For some reason, bumblebees and some solitary bees are particularly fond of flowering currant pollen.  Experiments with captive bees have shown that they will eat flowering currant pollen in preference to other pollens, even though it has been separated from the flowers.  If you want to recognize the early bumblebee, then look for yellow stripes (maximum of 2) and a gingery red tail.  They are also Britain’s smallest bumblebee.  Not only are they the smallest, but when I used to collect pollen, I could rely on the early workers because they carried huge lumps of pollen out of all proportion to their size.  Perhaps that’s why their colony life is short on the basis of ‘eat fast and die young’.

March 2020

I noticed something curious the other day.  There was a flock of gulls on the field at the back and they were all facing the same way.  There were a couple of magpies there also facing the same way as the gulls.  I then realized that whenever I see a small flock of birds on the field, they invariably face the same way – up the field towards Pett Road.  Is there a reason for this behaviour?  It could be that they are facing the prevailing wind, though they are facing South rather than South-west in the main.  It is possible that it has something to do with feeding, though I can’t think why they would be more successful in one direction rather than another.  If they were facing the sun then the direction would change from morning to evening.  Perhaps the slope on the field means their head is nearer the ground making feeding less energetic.  My theory, for what it’s worth, is that it is part of their escape plan.  If disturbed, they would be flying towards open sky, whereas if they were facing the other way, there are large trees and a hill facing them.  Whatever the reason, I will keep an eye out to see if it applies to all species or just gulls and magpies.  Maybe if I got closer to the ground to take a bird’s-eye view it would be informative.  So, don’t worry if you see me lying face down on the field, occasionally changing direction, I’ll just be working out an escape route.

As I write this storm Dennis is approaching and the wet weather continues.  At least it’s not as cold as 2018 when we had the Beast from the East to contend with, though last year scientists predicted that this year could be even colder.  So far that hasn’t happened and there are signs out there that spring isn’t that far away.  We have snowdrops and daffodils in flower and that ever reliable harbinger of spring, the lesser celandine is just in flower.  Of course, spring will happen whether there are harbingers or not, though exactly when seems less predictable these days.  If I was a real scientist, I would note when the first snowdrop appeared, and when the first daffodil opened and when I saw the first bumblebee, etc.  If I did that I would be called a phenologist – someone who studies the timing of natural events.  As it is, I know that snowdrops are traditionally due to flower on or about the first of February, and this year I think that they flowered round about that time.

Phenology is an important science as it shows how things change on a longer timescale.  It has become an important indicator of the effect of global heating, for example, and is closely linked with monitoring extinctions and new colonizers like the ivy bee I have mentioned before in this column that have only been seen here this century. 

Nowadays citizen science is growing in popularity and more people than ever before are recording sightings from the natural world, so that there are now huge databases showing what was seen, where, when, and how many.  The Sussex Wildlife Trust uses iRecord.  This is an online facility that anybody can use to enter their sightings as well as to search and explore what other people have found.  I use it a lot and each sighting is verified by experts which all helps to improve your identification skills.