The lawn in my front garden is covered in red clover, but there are surprisingly few bees on it. This seems to be a general trend across our RX area.
The impact of the cold winter and late spring can be seen in the meadows on Dungeness at the moment. Delayed growth of vegetation means that flowers have been slow to open, and there are even fewer bumblebees than at Northiam to feed on them. Over the past week Read the rest of this entry »
Two weeks ago I marked 4 worker red-tailed bumblebees using a bird nest-box in our Northiam garden so that I could recognise individuals and try to see how hard they were having to work to gather food. A plastic tube, rudely placed over the entrance hole forces the bees to halt allowing the colour, and number of the disc to be recorded on the way in and out of the nest.
For the past two weeks two bees have been observed regularly leaving the nest box, with a third making an occasional trip. The fourth has not been seen, either the disk has fallen off, it is staying in the box, or it has died. It may yet put in an appearance.
This morning saw Read the rest of this entry »