Out & About Summer 2021

Out&About environment

Common carder bee (Bom- bus pascuorum) on lavender

HOW TO HELP BEES FIND A HOME Even with a small outside space you can help create a home for bees, either by buying a ready-made cavity-nesting bee habitat or building one yourself using a wooden box, bamboo canes and hollow plant stems. Ensuring that your outdoor space has shady patches where bees can stay cool and access a water source, can also make a real difference. Bee facts from the World Wildlife Fund: Almost 90 per cent of wild plants and 75 per cent of major global crops depend on animal pollination Bees can live almost anywhere, including marshes, shingle, sand dunes, heathlands, wetlands, chalk grasslands, quarries, gravel pits and sea walls Bees have four wings – the two wings each side hook together to form one larger pair when they are flying and then unhook when they are resting or landed. Honeybees have a dance move called the ‘waggle dance’ – not really a dance, but a way for bees to communicate with each other and alert other bees to the best sources of food. The buff-tailed bumblebee has a brain the size of a poppy seed. Bees have smelly feet – they know their own scent from their ‘footprint’ and recognise the scent of other bees, whether known to them or from another colony. This helps them improve their success in finding food and avoiding areas where they have already been. If the queen bee dies in a honeybee hive, the workers will select a young larva and feed it special food – royal jelly – so it develops into a fertile queen.

Phantom hover fly

Shrill carder bee

Honey bee

Long horned bee

How to identify and help a struggling bee

rich flowers. If there are no flowers around, then just a few drops of white sugar dissolved in water will help. What to do if a bee lands on you Bees are non-aggressive unless threatened, so it’s important to stay calm. If it lands on your body or flat clothing, slowly walk to a sunny spot where you can place it in full sun on a plant, fence or table. If it lands on woolly clothes it may get tangled, so if this happens, just tuck a bit of paper or a leaf under its bottom. Bees are quite compliant with such actions and it then can’t sting you if it gets distressed. You can help by sliding the paper toward its head as it untangles each leg.

Bees are prone to cooling. If there is a sudden shower or it is a bit windy they will find cover and ‘wait it out’ until the hazard has passed. Once they perceive the coast to be clear, they will come out and carry on with their pollen collecting. If they stay in place for more than half an hour to 45 minutes then they may need help. If you think the bee is in danger of being stepped on, then you can safely move it out of danger and leave it to rest. Similarly, if it is in the rain, move it to a sheltered spot. If you’re worried that it hasn’t moved for a while, put it in a sunny spot if possible and close to some of its favourite nectar-

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O&A SUMMER 2021