BuzzWord Newsletter of the Bumblebee Conservation Trust Issue 9 2009 www.bumblebeeconservationtrust.co.uk 1 Contents of Issue 9: Editorial As many of you may know, February marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin. Therefore, in keeping with the celebrations that are taking place across the Editorial Page 3 country, we thought that we’d start this issue of Buzzword with a look at the great man’s fascination with bees. Please turn to page 4 to find out how he added to our Darwin and the Humble-Bee Page 4 understanding of these intriguing creatures. This issue is also packed with suggestions as Bumblebee research; get involved! Page 6 to how you too can help to add to our knowledge of bumblebees by getting involved in Bees in the news Page 9 some of BBCT’s research projects. Page 6 will help to get you started. Centre spread Page 10 Help BBCT to blossom! Page 12 Bees are becoming increasingly big news and have graced the pages of the world’s newspapers on several occasions Members’ pages Page 14 over the past few months. Please see page 9 to update Children’s pages Page 16 yourself on what is going on in the world of bees. The Classifieds Page 18 importance of both bumblebees and honeybees is gradually being recognised throughout the country, and Who are we: encouragingly within the government. Several members of Prof. Dave Goulson - Director the BBCT team had the pleasure of meeting MEP Alyn Dr. Ben Darvill - Director and Development Manager Smith (Edinburgh) and MSP Bruce Crawford (Stirling) Lucie Southern - Conservation Officer earlier this year and were delighted to discuss how the Bob Dawson - Scottish Conservation Officer plight of the bumblebee could be pushed further up the Christiane Nitsch - Trust Administrator political agenda both in the UK and throughout Europe. Emma Heskey - Trust Administrator Gillian Lye - PhD student and BeeWatch co-ordinator The Trust is once again gearing up for a busy spring and summer, and is currently planning much of its on-the- ground conservation work. We’re particularly keen to hear MSP Alyn Smith, Lucie Contacts from farmers, land owners and managers who are Bumblebee Conservation Trust, School of Biological & Environmental Sciences, Southern, MSP Bruce interested in helping bumblebees on their land. So Crawford and Bob Dawson University of Stirling, Stirling, FK9 4LA. Tel: 01786 467818 interested individuals - please do get in touch. Membership enquiries: [email protected] We’ve also started this year’s round of events and General enquiries: [email protected] talks. Bob the giant bumblebee joined local children to BeeWatch: [email protected] help celebrate the opening of Bonnyfield Local Nature Reserve (LNR) in Falkirk. Conservation Officer Lucie Full details of Trust activities and more information about bumblebees can be found on Southern gave a presentation to the Helensburgh our web pages at: Beekeepers and Natural History Society and was delighted to find such a large and enthusiastic www.bumblebeeconservationtrust.co.uk audience. Giving talks to local interest groups and schools is a fantastic way of raising awareness about bumblebee conservation. However, BBCT staff can Please renew your membership! only do so many. Could you give a simple talk to your You may have received a letter with this magazine, local group or school? A pack is available to help you do this if you would like to try. Please notifying you that your membership has expired. We see page 12 for more information about this and other ways in which you can help the very much hope that you will choose to stay with us and Trust. With your help 2009 can be a landmark year for the Trust… would like to thank those who have already renewed. Without your continued support there would be very This stunning photo was Changes are afoot amongst the BBCT staff this year. March sees us saying farewell to taken by Robert Smith and little that we could do to save our beautiful bumblebees! Conservation Officer Lucie Southern and a temporary goodbye to Trust Administrator shows an early bumblebee Christiane Nitsch as she settles into maternity leave. We wish Chrissie all the best for (B. pratorum) feeding on a motherhood and extend a very warm welcome to Emma Heskey who is doing a fine job of strawberry flower. 2 keeping the Trust office ticking over nicely in Chrissie’s absence! 3 “I hate bees” Darwin experimented with marking the bees by sprinkling flour from a sugar-shaker onto them as they went buy. He found that “The routes remain the same for a considerable Charles Darwin and the humble-bee time, and the buzzing places are fixed within an inch. I was able to prove this by stationing Dave Goulson five or six of my children each close to a buzzing place, and telling the one farthest away th to shout out " here is a bee " as soon as one was buzzing around. The others followed this This February is the 200 anniversary of the birth of the up, so that the same cry of "here is a bee " was passed on from child to child without great biologist Charles Darwin. He is of course famous for interruption until the bees reached the buzzing place where I myself was standing”. We his explanation of how evolution occurs by natural selection, now know that the male bees mark their route early in the morning with pheromones that but some of his other interests are less well known. At they paste onto a twig or leaf at each buzzing place with their mouthparts. We assume varying times during his life he spent long periods studying that this communal patrolling behaviour and the use of pheromones serves to attract coral reefs, barnacles, earthworms, pigeons, orchids, and queenCopyright??? bees looking for a mate, but to my knowledge neither Darwin nor anybody else has bumblebees, or humble-bees as he knew them. That he actually seen a queen bee attracted to one of these routes. was very fond of humble-bees is evident from the following quote: Darwin was particularly intrigued to note that male bees used the same route in “The humble-bees, amounting to thirty-five species, form one of the finest groups of consecutive years, even though the individual bees were all different since male bees only insects in this country, and, from their size and striking colours, are well known by every live for a few weeks. How can they know what route was used the year before? Does one” some of the pheromone remain? Or are the routes attractive to male bees in some other way? I am sure that, if Darwin were alive, it would only be a matter of time before he It is interesting to note that Darwin says there are 35 species; it is certain that there were would find the answers to these questions! never this many species in the UK. He spent many hours in his garden at Down House in Kent, observing bumblebees. Darwin was among the first to describe nectar-robbing in Although Darwin provided us with many brilliant insights into all sorts of aspects of biology bumblebees, whereby workers of some species bite holes in the back of flowers to steal and geology, the great man was not infallible. On one occasion he enlisted the help of a the nectar. He predicted that “All plants must suffer in some degree when bees obtain friend, John Lubbock, to study honeybees. Darwin had been watching honeybees feeding their nectar in a felonious manner by biting holes through the corolla” on clover, and noted that some individuals seemed to specialize in nectar robbery while others climbed into flowers by the conventional route. He formed the notion that the nectar Darwin was also the first to describe the odd mate location behaviour of male robbers might be forced into robbery because they have shorter tongues than their sisters, bumblebees, which he studied by enlisting the help of his numerous children. In high and he asked John Lubbock to catch a large sample of each and measure their tongues. summer he noticed streams of bees passing along a hedgerow, all going in the same Lubbock wrote to Darwin, informing him that both groups of bees had tongues of identical direction, pausing every few metres to hover by a tree-trunk, post, or prominent twig length. Darwin was clearly mortified to have made this mistake, and wrote back “I beg a (these sites he described as “buzzing places”). When he caught the bees he found that million pardons. Abuse me to any degree, but forgive me: it is all an illusion about the they were all male bees. I do so hope you have not wasted any time for my stupid blunder - I hate myself, I garden bumblebees hate clover and I hate bees” (Bombus hortorum). There was a deep ditch Darwin’s Barberry adjacent to the hedge, Berberis darwinii, commonly known as which was thorny, so Darwin’s Barberry, belongs to the family Darwin persuaded his Berberidaceae and was collected from the children to crawl in to the island of Chiloe, off Chile, by Darwin on the ditch to better observe Beagle voyage. the bees: “I could only follow them [the male This evergreen, thorny shrub makes a very bees] along this ditch by attractive and good all-round addition to making several of my any garden or urban green space. It is children crawl in, and lie fantastic for bees and other insects, and on their tummies, but in the berries are a good source of food for this way I was able to A map from Darwin’s notes, showing the route that the male birds in summer and autumn.