Blogs

Solitary bees are often overlooked in the world of bees, with bumblebees and honeybees being much more familiar to most people. In fact, 90% of the UK’s bee species are actually solitary bees, with around 250 solitary bee species, only 24 bumblebee species, and just one honeybee species.

A new ‘Wildlife Plot’ agri-environment option, which promises to be one of the best yet for biodiversity, has been developed as part of the GWCT’s PARTRIDGE Project on the Rotherfield Estate in Hampshire.

Bees that forage enter the flower from the front, and in turn pollinate the flower when retrieving nectar. When they rob, they chew a hole at the back of the flower or use a hole made by another bee and they steal the nectar without pollinating the flower – a lot of people are unaware that bees even do this!

In the BEESPOKE Project which is coordinated by GWCT, one of our tasks is to investigate the extent to which farmers are interested in conserving pollinators and if not, then why not. To help with this we are looking for farmers to complete this short survey.

Research shows that allocating just 2.2% of a farm to flower-rich habitat more than doubled the density of bumblebee colonies, which in turn boosts productivity.

This summer is the first season of fieldwork for the Framework project. The project has helped support the setup of 11 Farmer Clusters across various European countries and is looking at the impact of landscape-scale management on farmland wildlife over a five-year period.

Help us better understand farmer and grower attitudes and issues regarding pollinator management by taking our short survey.

This Thursday (20 May) marks the fourth annual World Bee Day. Given that more than 75% of the world’s food crops depend on pollination, it’s remarkable that this has been so long in the making.

The use of pesticides is hotly debated, but arguments around it are often absolute and lack nuance. The government derogation for farmers to use the neonicotinoid thiamethoxam on sugar beet this year (dependent on evidence of potentially yield threatening levels of pests) created lots of headlines, plenty of outrage and, at the time of writing, 50,597 signatures to reverse the decision.

The original blog we wrote has, not surprisingly, generated some comment, particularly with respect to the suggestion of a derogation on its use on kale in wild bird cover.