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transect sites

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The transects begin!

Hello everyone
 
It was time to start the transects for this year. Our advisour on the project Brian Banks has been walking transects for over 8 years on and around the RSPB Dungeness reserve. For this project we have added on a few more transects to access the habitat and bumblebee numbers around Dungeness and Romney Marsh. Hopefully with all the habitat currently available for bumblebees over time we may see an increase in their numbers and fingers crossed more rare species!
 
Today I went out with Geoff Allen and Nick Withers and we went around four sites across Dungeness and Romney Marsh. The areas of land we are surveying are specifically for long tongue bumblebees, therefore later flowering flowers such as red clover, yellow vetchling, birds foot trefoil and vetches. There flowers are due to begin flowering normally around now but due to the cold winter they are slightly late this year. So much of the flowers had begun a growth over the last few days of good weather and hopefuly in the next few weeks we will see some good flowering.
 
The release is not to far away now so keep posted for more news.....

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The release is coming soon!!

Dear all
 
It's exciting times on the subt project as the release is fast approaching!! The week before last I walked around RSPB Dungeness with Pete Akers and Bob Gomnes to assess how the release fields were doing. This years flowers are quite late because of the cold weather we have been experiencing. Originally the release was going to be within the first week of June but we feel the flowers will not have come through by this time so we have postponed the release until a bit later.
 
In order for the queens to be released we have to prove that they do not have any diseases which are not already present in the UK bumblebee populations. Therefore Rosemary (our breeder) sent over dead males and queen specimens for analysis. To date it looks like there is nothing on the bees which the UK doesn't already have. Which makes sense as they came from the UK in the first place.
 
We are now getting the finishing touches together for the release. Watch this space for more details....
 
Nikki

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