BuzzWord. Recruit a friend or make a donation to help BBCT conserve the UK s bumblebees. Issue Newsletter of the Bumblebee Conservation Trust

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1 Recruit a friend or make a donation to help BBCT conserve the UK s bumblebees I would like to join the BBCT: Name... Address Postcode BuzzWord Newsletter of the Bumblebee Conservation Trust Issue Please enclose a cheque for 16 ' or fill in the standing order form (below) ' Gift Aid Declaration I want the charity to treat all donations that I make from the date of this declaration until I notify you otherwise as Gift Aid donations ' STANDING ORDER MANDATE To: Bank Sort Code:.. Address:... Postcode Please pay the undernoted Standing Order Signature:. Date: / /. Please pay the standing order to: Bank of Scotland, Sortcode , 73 Henderson Street, Bridge of Allan, Stirling, FK9 4HG Account name: BUMBLEBEE CONSER- VATION TRUST Account number: Please pay the following: Amount: 16 In words: Sixteen pounds Commencing././.. (first payment) & thereafter annually on 1st June Post to: 20 Bumblebee Conservation Trust, School of Biological & Environmental Sciences, University of Stirling, Stirling, FK9 4LA Bumblebee Conservation Trust, School of Biological & Environmental Sciences, University of Stirling, Stirling, FK9 4LA 1

2 Contents of Issue 2: The bumblebee life cycle Part II in a series on the biology of bumblebees (Page 4) Flowers for bumblebees; the figworts (Page 8) Centre Spread Each issue we feature our favourite bumblebee picture (Page 10) Have you seen this bee? Help us track the spread of the tree bumblebee, Bombus hypnorum (Page 12) Gallery: Members photographs (Page 14) Quinn (Page 16) Letters (Page 18) BBCT News These are exciting times for the Bumblebee Conservation Trust. We received unprecedented media coverage for our official launch in May 2006, including getting the first 3 pages of the Independent devoted to bumblebees and their declines. Membership has leapt to nearly 1,000 in three months, with new members continuing to flood in every day. We have just been granted charity status, so we would be enormously grateful if members that are taxpayers could fill in and return the Gift Aid form enclosed with this newsletter. This will enable us to claim back an additional 28% on top of your membership subscription. We already feel that we are beginning to in halting the decline in bumblebee numbers. One thousand packets of wildflower seeds have been sent out to members and have hopefully been sown throughout the UK, providing a few more flowers for our beleaguered 2 bees. Our advice lines have been flooded with requests for information on which other flowers to grow to feed bumblebees, and how to make a little progress Cover photograph: Tree bumblebee, Bombus hypnorum, photographed in Southampton. This species was first recorded in the UK in 2001 in the New Forest, but has since spread northwards. See P 12 Dear BBCT Team, We've witnessed a real surge in the number of bumblebees in and around our garden this year (along with an increase in nesting birds). I'm also an amateur beekeeper and we're enjoying a bumper crop of honey this year! Have attached a photo of a strange bee like creature that loves our lavender bushes. It's a sort of moth/bee/humming bird combination with a huge proboscis. Any idea what it could be? We're proud to be members of BBCT and are informing all our friends here in "BEElgium". Richard & Peggy, Belgium Reply: This lovely creature is a hummingbird hawk moth (Macroglossum stellatarum). It is a day-flying moth that hovers in front of flowers (especially lavender and fuschia), sipping nectar through its extraordinarily long proboscis. It is a southern European species that sometimes migrates northwards to Britain during the summer. Increasingly hot summers mean that they are becoming quite a common sight in the southern half of Britain Dear BBCT, Our garden is on the northern edge of suburban London. Our grandson Edward (age 9) made us a tit box at school last year and after one successful use it fell down. The box was put at the edge of the patio for winter on a couple of bricks and in early spring we noticed a queen red tailed bumble bee (Bombus lapidarius) going in and out. Needless to say we did not put the box back for the birds but have had a fascinating summer watching the comings and goings. This all coincided with the article in the Independent! It is also interesting that on a trip to Stourhead with his parents recently Edward noticed some bumble bees and traced them to a hole in a bank, so he has seen where they would live naturally too. (Unfortunately they didn't have any thing with them to make an identification, his poster was at home!). It does show though that once an interest has been stimulated then you begin to see all sorts of things that would otherwise pass you by!! Ergo how important your campaign is to raise awareness. Sincerely Margaret Lawrence, London 19

3 Letters Dear Sirs Have you considered amongst the impacts, on bumblebee survival, the effect that badgers have on recruitment of young queens for the following season? All of the bumblebee nests that I come across are invariably dug up by badgers before the young queens have a chance to emerge. Is this considered in your study or are you even aware of the impact? Comments are invited. Iain Semple Reply: We have had a number of similar letters. Badgers are undoubtedly a major predator of bumblebee nests. They probably sniff them out at night, and if the nest is not too deep they will dig it up and eat the comb, bees and all. They must have very tough mouths to cope with the stings! However, badgers and bumblebees must have coexisted for millennia. Badgers are certainly not the major cause of declines in bumblebees, which are driven mainly by intensive farming techniques which leave little room for wildflowers or bees. Dear Prof David, Thank you very much indeed and greetings in the name of Lord. Well It is amazing that you and other nature loving friends in UK has come forward to protect the lovely bumblebees in nature. I found your stories from The Independence news letter. I am in Calcutta and having family garden in country side and there is plenty of bees and insects too. There are many of my friends in UK & US. I pray for your grand success and I believe the bumblebees will come back quickly. I address, school kids may help lot in this project. Thank you. David A. Ghosh, Calcutta 18 Dear BBCT, This week we have had 2 instances of red-tailed bumble bees which appear to be covered in mites. One bee died and the other is in severe difficulty. Can anything be done for individual bees? Alastair Bellamy, Perth Reply: These mites (Parasitellus spp.) are very common and are native to the UK. Although they look unpleasant, they do not actually feed on the bee, but are just using it for transport. They are actually scavengers in the nest, eating pollen, wax, droppings etc. They move between nests by hopping on to bees leaving the nest, and then on to flowers, and then on to the next passing bee, and in this way most nests end up with mites in them. Towards the end of the season they climb on to a new queen (as above), and cling to her right through the winter. Although they don t feed on her, heavy infestations must weigh the queen down and make her less likely to succeed in building her own nest. The mites are easily dislodged with a paintbrush if you wish to help, although take care not to get stung as the bee may not appreciate your well-meaning intentions! provide them with nest sites. Bumblebee walks and identification days have been run across the country, and talks on bumblebees given to interested groups. Money from membership plus a 50,000 grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund has boosted our coffers so that we are now able to recruit a full-time conservation officer to help run our office in Stirling and promote our conservation activities further. We recently launched an appeal to raise money for the purchase of our first bumblebee nature reserve, and we would very much like to thank the many generous individuals who have already contributed amounts varying from 5 to 500. Our intention is to purchase degraded/ abandoned land in the Hebrides, and to restore it to provide flowerrich habitat for our rarest bumblebee, the great yellow (Bombus distinguendus). We have also received 28,000 from the Scottish Executive & Scottish Natural Heritage to carry out more much-needed research on how best to conserve the great yellow. We have played a major role in a campaign to prevent the illegal importation of non-native bumblebees to the UK for crop pollination, something that poses a direct threat to our native species (more in the next issue). We have also added our weight to the considerable opposition to the Thames Gateway Development, which threatens to destroy some of the last remaining sites for rare insects such as the shrill carder bee, B. sylvarum. Overall, we have been incredibly busy. We hope that our members feel that we are putting their money to good use! Bumblebee face painting at the BBCT stand, Springwatch Breathing Space event, Southampton common, June The bumblebee walk led by Juliet Osborne at Rothamsted Research, Herts 3 Dave Goulson (Director) & Ben Darvill (Treasurer)

4 The Bumblebee Life Cycle Bumblebees are harbingers of spring, for they are among the first insects to appear each year. Most insects cannot fly if it is cold, but bumblebee queens are sometimes active when the temperature is below freezing and there is still snow on the ground. They are large and have a dense furry coat, and can also generate heat prior to take-off by vibrating their flight muscles. As early as January in the south of England, the huge queens of the buff-tailed bumblebee (B. terrestris) can be seen exploring nest sites on shady banks or along hedgerows bottoms. These queens have been hibernating in the ground since the previous August. When the late winter sunshine warms the soil they emerge, hungry from their long fast. There are few flowers at this time of year, and they eagerly visit any garden flowers that are available. Once they have found some sugar-rich nectar to fuel their flight, they then set about the task of finding a suitable place to build their nest. A queen buff-tailed bumblebee (B. terrestris) feeding on nectar from sallow (Salix) in March will try again. Buff-tailed bumblebees prefer old abandoned mouse holes in shady places that will not get too hot in mid-summer. They fly close to the ground, zig-zagging from side to side in a characteristic way. If they see a dark hole, they will land and explore, sometimes disappearing for several minutes while they investigate whether the hole is suitable. Usually it is not, for the queens are quite fussy. The cavity has to be sufficiently large so that it will accommodate a full grown nest (about the size of a football if all goes well), and preferably deep enough that it will not be easily dug up by badgers (which love to eat bumblebee nests, bees and all). More often than not the queen will have to return to hibernation until the next warm spell when she Finding a nest site is just the beginning. Once she has done so, the queen will circle the entrance several times to memorize its location, and then set off to find pollen. Gorse flowers and sallow catkins are among the few sources of pollen available in early spring, and so are very popular with bumblebee queens. She strips the pollen from the anthers with her legs, which are covered in stiff bristles for the purpose. The pollen is gathered into special baskets on the hind legs (corbiculae), where it is held together in a ball with a little sticky nectar. After a number of trips she will have gathered enough pollen in the nest to make a ball slightly larger than a pea, which she mixes with a little more nectar to make a dough. She secretes wax from the underside of her body which she uses to coat the pollen ball. She also makes a little wax cup next to the pollen, which she fills with nectar. During this process her eggs have been 4 developing inside her, and are soon ready to lay. She lays them in batches of up to 16, and pushes them into the soft pollen ball. The eggs are creamywhite and sausage shaped, and sit together in a cluster. She incubates them in ex- What more can you do to help our bumblebees? Hopefully you are already aware of some of the ways in which you can make your garden (if you have one) friendlier for bumblebees and other wildlife. You should also have received a packet of foxglove seeds with this issue, please find a corner to sow them in if you possibly can. If you do not have a garden, give them to a friend who has, or sprinkle them in the countryside, preferably somewhere where the soil has recently been disturbed so the seeds stand a chance of germinating. Other things you can do: Recruit a friend to become a member of BBCT, using the form on the back of the newsletter. If every member recruited one more, that would be one thousand new members, and would vastly increase what the Trust can achieve Fill in the Gift Aid form sent out with this newsletter and return it to us (if you are a taxpayer). This costs you only the price of a stamp, but enables us to claim back 28% more on top of your membership fee. enquiries@bumblebeeconservationtrust.co.uk if you wish to get news bulletins from BBCT, or if you would prefer to get your newsletter electronically (thus saving us money) Thank-you to our Founding and Fellow Members! The BBCT would like to extend a special thank-you to those who have joined as Fellow or Founding members. Your generous contributions to the Trust are much appreciated and we will endeavour to put them to good use! New Founding Members Joanna Taylor, North Yorks Jenny Robertson, Surrey Robert Cotterill, Swansea William Landells, Suffolk PK Wells, Isle of Mann John Williams, Jersey Glenys Jones, Dorset Lavinia Down, Newcastle Duncan Lawie, Enfield William Jardine, London Marc Carlton, London George Pilkington, Warrington Mary Walker, Devon Giles Darvill, Hant Vicky Oakes, Hants Spencer Key, Devon Sheila Chatten, Berks Gavin Goulson, Shrops Battery Force Ltd., Kent John Kyle, Middlesex Alison McGachy, Edinburgh New Fellow Members Andrew Tullo, Lancs Jonathan Chappell, E. Sussex Andrew Vaughn, Isle of Mann Deborah Jones, E. Sussex Jeanette Ward, Notts Jo Fitz-Henry & Andy Lesley, Notts George Sudbury, Hants Andy Beswick, Surrey Polly Potter, Cheshire Colin Horwood, Essex Jamie Gordon, Somerset Margaret Lawrence, London Susan Griffiths, Berks T. Gaussen, W. Yorks Rosemary Mason & Palle Jepson, Swansea JB Shropshire & Sons, Cambs Lyndsey Rolfe, Cambs Tim Guest, Kent 17

5 The adventures of Quinn the bumblebee sniffer dog In June this year the BBCT staff gained a new member, Quinn the springer spaniel. Quinn had just graduated from the Defence Animals Centre (DAC) in Melton Mowbray, the organisation that trains drug sniffer dogs for the police and explosives sniffer dogs for the army. But Quinn has not been trained to find drugs or bombs; he is the world s first bumblebee sniffer dog, trained to sniff out the distinctive smell of bumblebee nests. Nests are exceedingly hard to find for us humans, since they are usually hidden in dense undergrowth or underground. But it is clear that badgers have little trouble sniffing them out, for it is common to find nests that have been dug up and largely eaten by badgers. We toyed with the idea of trying to train a badger to help us, but realized that might prove tricky, so opted instead for a dog. The first two dogs that the DAC tried to train to find bumblebee nests proved to be delinquents and failed to graduate, but it was third time lucky with Quinn. He us currently scouring Tiree for bumblebee nests with his handler, PhD student Joe Waters. We hope to be able to find out how many nests there are of some of the rarer species such as the great yellow bumblebee, 16 and also to find out more about the kinds of places where they like to nest. actly the way that a bird does. She lies on top of the pollen ball, spreading her body as wide as possible to cover it. She produces heat by shivering her flight muscles, and so keeps the eggs as close to 30 o C as possible. This is quite a task for a small bee when you consider that the outside temperature at this time of year (by now it is probably March or thereabouts) often drops below freezing at night. The nectar cup provides her with vital energy needed to warm her body and the eggs, but its contents are soon used up. Every chance she gets, when the early spring weather allows, she will dash from the nest to gather more nectar. After about four days the eggs hatch, and then the queen s tasks become even harder, for she has to gather more pollen to feed the growing larvae, as well as nectar to keep herself and her brood warm. The larvae feed only on pollen and nectar. They are rather maggot-like, Eggs, larvae and pupal cocoons in a nest of the buff-tailed bumblebee white, legless grubs, and are completely helpless. Without the food and warmth provided by their mother they would very quickly die. Like all insects, the larvae shed their skin at intervals as they grow. They do this three times, until about fourteen days after hatching they are ready to pupate. At this point they spin an eggshaped silken cocoon, within which they shed their skin once more to become pupae. Within the pupae the larvae undergo metamorphosis, just as a caterpillar turns into a butterfly. The tissues of the larvae almost entirely break down, and are reorganized to produce a new body which in no way resembles the old. The white, featureless and immobile grub becomes a complex, six-legged flying furball. About fourteen days after pupation the adult bees hatch from their pupal cases and then bite their way out of the cocoons. At this point one feels the queen should breathe a sigh of relief, for finally she has some help around the nest! The bees that emerge are all female. They are usually smaller than their mother, and do not have properly developed reproductive parts. They will never be able to mate. When they first emerge their fur is white, but after a few days they develop the adult colours, resembling their mother. These bees are known as workers. The role of the workers is to help their mother rear more workers (their sisters). As soon as her first batch of offspring pupated, the queen will have laid a second 5 batch of eggs. By now they will have hatched into grubs and will need feeding. The workers take over all of the foraging duties, so the queen will never again need to leave her (Continued on page 6)

6 (Continued from page 5) nest. In March or April the first bumblebee workers appear outside, eagerly gathering nectar and pollen from the spring flowers. They also work within the nest, feeding their younger siblings and helping to keep the nest warm. If all goes well the queen will now be being well fed and will start to lay batches of eggs every few days, so that the nest begins to grow rapidly. By June there may be up to 400 sister workers in a healthy nest, all devoted to the task of helping their mother produce more sisters. Just as in humans, workers tend to specialize in particular jobs. Some spend all of their time gathering pollen or nectar. Others never leave the nest, spending their time caring for the brood. Workers vary a lot in size, and in general, those that go foraging outside tend to be the big ones, while the smaller ones remain at home. Some sit in the nest entrance, day after day, guarding the nest against attack. By specializing, it is probable that they each become good at their chosen task. Foraging for food is a particularly difficult job, for the bee has to first learn to navigate to and from the nest. Then Worker bees guarding the entrance to their nest it has to discover which of the flowers available are most rewarding and are suitable for it to visit, and it has to learn how to extract the nectar or pollen (in some flowers it is hidden away). On their first trips from the nest foragers often return empty-handed. By the time they have made thirty or more trips they know exactly what they are doing, and speed backwards and forwards between the nest and their chosen patch of flowers. In early summer, the nest switches to producing males and new queens, rather than sterile workers. The queen can control the sex of the eggs that she lays. At this point she switches to laying both male and female eggs. Through the spring she has been producing a chemical signal (pheromone) that told larvae to develop as workers rather than queens. She switches this signal off. Female eggs have the potential to turn into either a worker or a queen, and the default setting (in the absence of a signal from the queen telling them otherwise) is to develop as a queen. Thus from this time on all larvae reared are either males or future queens. The new queens fatten themselves up by feeding on food stores in the nest, for they have a long sleep ahead. Once they have filled their body with fat they leave 6 the nest to seek a mate. The males also leave the nest to search for new queens with which to mate. The new bumblebee queens generally mate just once, and are then ready for hibernation. The sperm stored within them will not be used until the A white-tailed bumblebee (B. lucorum) gathering nectar from a vivid yellow sunflower. Sunflowers are increasingly grown in southern UK, and provide a welcome boost of food for our bumblebees. Photograph taken by Chris Freer A male buff-tailed bumblebee (B. terrestris) feeding on lavender. Lavender is one of the best cottage garden flowers for bumblebees, flowering from June to September. Photograph taken by Delma Moore If you would like to see your best bumblebee photograph in Buzzword, please send it in (preferably by ). Not so long ago highly specialized and expensive equipment would be needed to take photographs such as these, but modern digital cameras make taking high quality images of insects and other small creatures a possibility for almost anyone. They also have the huge advantage that if the insects flies off at the wrong moment (as often happens), you can just delete the image and try again. So next spring, give it a go, and send us the results! 15

7 Gallery: members photographs following spring when they try to start their own nest. The males are capable of mating many times, and have little interest in anything else other than drinking nectar to fuel their courtship efforts. However, the supply of unmated queens is soon gone. By August most nests are deteriorating. No new workers are being produced, and the old ones slowly die off (if it is lucky a worker might live for a month or so). The nests become overrun with beetles, caterpillars, woodlice, maggots and other insects that feed on the wax and pollen stores, and they quickly decay. The old queen is usually balding with age, and becomes sluggish and dies as the food supplies run out. The males and some workers can survive into late September, but without a nest they are doomed as autumn approaches. Soon only the new queens remain, safe underground waiting for the spring. One of our favourites! A swarm of different bumblebee species feeding on the huge flower of a cardoon. Among the species visible are a queen buff-tailed bumblebee (B. terrestris) (large bee in the centre), a worker red-tailed bumblebee (B. lapidarius) (right), and several male cuckoo bees, probably the southern cuckoo bee Bombus vestalis (bottom). Photograph taken by Sarah Jenkins. 14 Not a bumblebee at all, but actually a hoverfly, Merodon equestris, seen here feeding on scabious. Hoverflies are harmless but some species such as this one closely resemble bumblebees, presumably in an attempt to scare off potential predators, particularly insectivorous birds. If you can get close enough to get a good look, you will see that they differ from bumblebees in several ways, having very tiny antennae and only one pair of wings (all bees have two). Adults of this species appear in late spring. The maggots are a minor garden pest, burrowing into bluebell and narcissus bulbs. Photograph taken by John Pickard. The life cycle is very similar in almost all bumblebees, but they differ in the details. Bufftailed bumblebee queens are among the first to emerge, usually in late winter in the south, or April in Scotland. Each species tends to emerge at a particular time, and some, such as the brown-banded carder bee (B. humilis) and the shrill carder bee (B. sylvarum) do not emerge until late May or June. They also differ in the types of places that they like to nest. While buff-tailed bumblebees like to nest underground in rodent holes, the carder bees nest just above ground, in dense tussocky grass or under leafmould. The tree bumblebee (B. hypnorum), as its name suggests, likes to nest in holes in trees and will often use tit boxes. Some species have rather short-lived nests. Queens of the early bumblebee (B. pratorum) start their nests in March and by late April the first males can be seen in the south of England. By late June this species has all but disappeared, although it is thought that there is Male bumblebees such as this whitetailed bumblebee (B. lucorum) are common in summer, and spend a lot of time sitting on flowers. They do no work in the nest, but are interested only in sex and drink. sometimes a partial second generation, with some queens not hibernating but instead founding nests in mid-summer. Since the late 1980 s in the south of England, buff-tailed bumblebees have started to appear throughout the year. Queens can be seen in November, and workers are quite common in December and January, collecting pollen from garden shrubs, particularly Mahonia spp.. It seems that this species has adapted to the combination of exotic garden plants that provide flowers throughout the year together with increasingly mild winters, and has become more-or-less continuously 7 brooded. More of the country can expect to see bumblebees at Christmas if the climate continues to warm as predicted.

8 Flowers for bumblebees; the figworts Bumblebees are quite particular about which flowers they visit, and ignore many of the showy bedding plants that are so widely available from garden centres. Busy lizzies, pansies, begonias, lobelias and the like have been subjected to extreme artificial selection by plant breeders to produce larger, more spectacular blooms in a huge variety of colours, but in the process the flowers have often lost the vital nectar that attracts bees, or the shape of the flower has become so deformed that insects can no longer reach the nectar or pollen. For this reason old-fashioned cottage garden flowers, which are often very similar to the wild flowers from which they originated, are much better for wildlife. 8 Foxglove, Digitalis purpurea Here we highlight a plant family which contains both familiar garden plants and wildflowers that are much loved by bumblebees, the Scrophulariaceae (the latin name is a bit of a mouthful!). Sometimes also known as the figworts, this family contains one flower familiar to everybody: the foxglove. Every garden should have foxgloves. They are one of rather few wildflowers that are also widely accepted as garden flowers. They are easy to grow on most soils, can happily tolerate moderate shade or full sun, and look spectacular at the back of a herbaceous border when they flower in June and July. The plants are usually biennial but A tree bumblebee nest in a tit box, photographed by Juliet Osborne Dear BBCT, I read in the paper about the new tree bumblebee that has invaded England from France. Yesterday evening at about 11pm I was in my kitchen making a cup of tea when I was alarmed to see a huge insect with bright staring eyes bashing at the window trying to get in. I have never seen anything like this horrible thing before and think it must have been one of these new bees. Are they dangerous? Pamela, Portsmouth Reply: It is hard to say for sure what this beast was, but it sounds like a moth. The eyes of some species are quite large and reflect light much like a cat s. They are often attracted to light at night. Bumblebees do not normally fly at night, so it seems highly unlikely that this was a tree bumblebee. nest, so if you do find a nest you would be best advised to avoid disturbing it. We have no idea how or why this species suddenly invaded the UK. It seems unlikely that a bumblebee could easily fly the 21 miles across the channel from France, so perhaps a mated queen or even a small nest was accidentally brought over on a ferry. However it got here, the species is probably here to stay, and should be welcomed. Some non-native species can pose a threat to native wildlife, but we have no reason to suspect the tree bumblebee of doing any harm, and at a time when bumblebee numbers in general are dwindling it is good to see at least one species thriving. BUMBLEE BEE! My name is Bumblee Bee, I'm as happy as can be, Bumbling around, off the ground, with a heart that's full of glee! I fly to a flower, tall as a tower, and take some pollen with me, No shops to buy from, banks to borrow from, everything here is free! My name is Bumblee Bee, I'm as happy as can be, My body is squat, it's short and fat; Do I care? Not me! According to laws it shouldn't be, that I in fact am a flying bee, I can, you see, get off the ground, with a heart that is full of glee! My name is Bumblee Bee, I'm as happy as can be, Warm is the sun, I'm full of fun, a cheery bumbling bee! I buzz and bumble, collect and return to my hive not far away, Bumbling around, come what may, and never a dollar in pay! My name is Bumblee Bee, I'm as happy as can be, I'm not in a hurry, why should I worry, I'm flying as you can see! Next time you see me bumbling free, be happy like me a bumbling bee, Defying the laws that shouldn't be, to be in fact a bumblebee! Poem sent in by BBCT member Linda Killey 13 FREE FOXGLOVE SEEDS WITH THIS ISSUE!

9 Wanted: A worker Illegal of the great Immigrant! yellow bumblebee,, photographed by Don 5 August When 2005 out on catching an overgrown bumblebees football in pitch the summer on the machair of 2001 of I chanced South Uist. upon Insect a distinctive beast photography feeding on is a increasingly bramble patch easy by with the side modern of the digital A36 cameras. near Landford, Send on us your the edge of the favourite New Forest. picture, It was and if quite we unlike it we anything will include I had it ever in Buzzword. seen before. The front half looked quite like that of a common carder bee, but it had a black abdomen and white tail. I double-checked my identification guides, and quickly became convinced that that this was a tree bumblebee, B. hypnorum, a species never before recorded in the UK. This was pretty exciting stuff (at least for a bee enthusiast!), because as far as I know, there had been no new additions to the UK bumblebee list since records began. Just to be sure, I sent the bee to the Natural History Museum, (London) who confirmed my identification. Have you seen this bee? We are keen to monitor the spread of the tree bumblebee B. hypnorum across the UK. This is a male, feeding on bistort in Southampton, 2004 In the following few years I found the species in my garden in Southampton, where by 2004 it was quite common. The tree bumblebee seems to be spreading, for we have received scattered records from along the south cost from East Sussex to Devon, and northwards as far as London and Hertfordshire. Recently there have been unconfirmed sightings in Warwickshire and, in 2006, from Fife in Scotland. We would very much like to get more records to track the spread of this bee. In Scandinavia this species occurs further north than the northernmost tip of Scotland, so there is no reason why it could not spread that far and one day become a common site throughout the UK. It is a very distinctive bee, so that even a relative novice in bumblebee identification shouldn t confuse it with anything else (although see opposite!). The tree bumblebee s 12 name comes from it s habit of nesting in holes in trees, rather than on or under ground like most bumblebees. They often use tit boxes (see opposite page). This species is said to be more aggressive than most when defending its readily self-seed so that, once established in a garden, there is usually a steady supply of seedlings that are easily grubbed up or moved if there are too many or they are in the wrong place. Foxgloves attract longer-tongued bee species, particularly the garden bumblebee B. hortorum, for a long tongue is needed to reach the nectar hidden at the back of the flower. Long-tongued bumblebee species are doing particularly badly at present, so it is especially important that we try to provide food for them in our gardens. Some wild relatives of foxgloves are also favourites with bumblebees, such as yellow rattle (Rhinanthus minor) and red bartsia (Odontites verna). Yellow rattle is found in old haymeadows and chalk downland, and is so named because the seeds within the seed heads rattle loudly as you walk through them. Yellow rattle, Rhinanthus minor The yellow flowers appear in May and June. They are not especially showy but are very attractive to queens of some or our rare bumblebee species such as the brownbanded carder bee (B. humilis). Red bartsia is also a rather understated little plant, but is the staple diet of the very rare shrill carder bee (B. sylvarum) on Salisbury plain, one of its last strongholds in the UK. Both red bartsia and yellow rattle are unusual plants in that they are partially parasitic on grasses. Yellow rattle in particular is a really good addition to a wildflower meadow because it saps the strength of grasses which might otherwise dominate, leaving more room for wildflowers. 9 A white-tailed bumblebee (B. lucorum) collecting pollen from red bartsia (Odontites verna)

10 A common carder bee (B. pascuorum) worker investigates a lavender flower, unfurling its tongue as it does so. Photographed in Southampton, July