Dungeness days!!

Dear all

We had a great weekend last week and saw lots of exciting bumblebees on the walks at RSPB Dungeness. Each was preceded by a talk for 30 minutes. We saw lots of humilis and muscorum foraging on water mint, purple loosestrife, tufted vetch, viper's bugloss and the thistles. The weather was fantastic with hot sunshine and hardly any wind (unusual for Dungeness!). Thank you to all the people that came to the stall ,the walks and talks. A very big thank you to Duncan Lawrie and Robert Jones who volunteered on the stall and on the bee walks and talks, they did a great job! As the season is coming to an end I will be doing a few winter bee talks, one at Tunbridge Wells museum and another at RSPB Dungeness. I will post an events list soon on my blog!

Last Thursday I went back to RSPB Dungeness accompanied by Paul Williams from the Natural History Museum. He is the world's leading taxonomist on bumblebees. So it was a real treat to have him come down for the day. He actually did his PhD on declining bumblebee numbers, and all of his fieldwork was down at Dungeness, so we were retracing his steps. We saw lots and lots of humilis and a few muscorum and it was a chance to show him all the great work which has been done on the reserve for the bees!

Over the next few weeks I will be working on our release licence for subt and chasing up on boring paper work. I'm hoping to visit a lot of schools when the new term begins, so if you would like me to come into your school do let me know!!

Until next time...... Nikki

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Academic Excellence at the Heart of Scotland.
The University of Stirling is a charity registered in Scotland,
number SC 011159.

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Hello everyone!
 
I've just got back from the Czech Republic, to see how they breed the short haired bumblebee! Jaromir Cizek and Vladimir Ptacek have successfully captive reared subt. They are so far some of the only people to have done this, as subt is very hard to rear and nest successfully in the laboratory. The nests need very careful attention and must be fed each day with fresh pollen. The methods given by Jaromir and Vladimir we will use in New Zealand to captive rear subt, the next generation of queens will then be sent back to UK for release. I must give my appreciation to Jaromir and Vladimir for sharing their expertise with me and for being so enthusiastic in helping us reintroduce subt back to the UK.
 
Subt queens come out of hibernation much earlier in the Czech Republic about April/May time, the nest then lives for about 3-4 months. As I went at the end of July the colonies were over and I was not able to see them in the wild. Unfortunately subt are very scarce in the Czech Republic as well, as they are across Europe. One thing that amazed me over there was the amount of wild flowers they have. Along the road sides, around the housing estates and still in the countryside they have beautiful wild flowers. I was told this was because it can be too expensive to mow the grass regularly so the wild flowers still exist. Its such a shame in the UK that all out lawns are mown so frequently here as our wild flowers just don't have a chance.
 
So here's some photo's of my trip. I have also added a photo of the Natural England Wye festival stall I did. Next weekend RSPB Dungeness are holding a weekend wildlife festival, lots of local charities will have stalls, there are lots of activities for everyone and a BBQ as well. I will be hosting two bee walks and talks each day. So do come along and join us!

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