Plants With Purpose - May 06
LAST SUMMER the keys to our garage went missing. After months of accusations and counter-accusations, they eventually turned up on a fence post, but that is neither here nor there. What is relevant is that we had to remove the entire hasp lock and replace it, leaving several redundant screw-holes in the woodwork. Tripping past the other week, I noticed a small, furry, ginger-bottomed bee carefully backing out of one, and later returning. A quick check confirmed it was a sweet, solitary bee called Osmia rufa.
I was thrilled to have this useful pollinator sharing the garage, and I have been equally pleased with the number of queen bumble bees setting up home or foraging in the garden this spring. There are at least 42 species of bumblebee native to Britain: large and little ones, red-tailed, white-tailed, and ginger all over. It’s fun trying to get to know the ones in your garden, but one that often causes householders concern is Bombus terrestris, the Earth Bumble Bee. Like honeybees, bumble bees are social insects, forming a colony of queen, workers and drones.
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When this colony takes up residence in your rockery or compost heap, and appears to be growing rapidly, I suppose it’s easy to panic. However, the bees will only be there for the summer, and the numbers are nowhere near as large in a honeybee colony. As autumn approaches, the new queens fly off to be mated and find hibernation sites for the winter, and the drones and workers will die off. Moreover, as bumblebees are less defensive than honeybees, there is little risk, but Great Honour, in supplying them with a much-needed habitat!
Habitat decline is probably the most important factor in the decline of our native bees. Many solitary bees, like Osmia, require holes and burrows and nooks to nest in, while the Mining Bees (Andrena), gorgeous, busy little characters, may be seen in early summer rising from the lawn like smoke, where they are raising families in subterranean townships. Cuckoo Bees (Psithyrus and Nomada) cut out the hard work, and usurp queen bumble bees in order to get the workers to raise their young instead.
The leaf-cutter bee (Megachile) is another garden visitor – usually to rose bushes, where she carves perfect “bites” from the leaves, flies off with them, and then rolls them up and seals them to form incubators for her eggs. Don’t worry, the roses will get over it – and Megachile is arguably more entertaining! Potter Bees (Anthophora) make little clay pots for their eggs, while Carder Bees make “nests” of moss and grass.
Native bees are hugely important pollinators, both of our wild flora and of many crops, and our gardens (when not tidied to racking sobs or sprayed to extinction) can provide them with the ideal sanctuary.
I’m away to drill some more holes in the garage…..
© Margaret Lear
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