The Bumblebee Conservation Trust announces a beginners course to introduce you to the world of bumblebees and their ecology, lifecycle and conservation.
The course costs £10 per head (includes tea and coffee) and run from 10.30 - 15.00
To book your place contact Dr. Nikki Gammans on nikki.gammans@bumblebeeconservation or telephone RSPB Dungeness on 01797 320588
Booking essential to guarantee a place
All proceeds to the short-haired bumblebee project
A superbly illustrated key to the Chrysididae of the Nordic and Baltic countries (in English) is available as a free download. It should provide a very useful aid to identifying wasps in the family Chrysididae. The key includes all the British mainland species apart from Chrysis rutiliventris* . It can be downloaded here
* C. vanlithi - treated as a subspecies of C. rutiliventris by some authors - is included in the key.
The NBN are running a short project seeking to classify recorder motivations, and understand what support different recorders prefer. They're using both questionnaires and interviews, and need as wide a range of responses as possible to cover the diversity of circumstances and perspectives. If you collect data from the environment and would like to be included, further details are here:
http://www.nbn.org.uk/News/Latest-news/Recorder-motivation-internship-we-re-… Read more
A significant leap north west for Colletes hederae is apparent, with the discovery of a well established population around Llandudno in North Wales, on 8 October. A large nest aggregation was found on Little Orme as well as individuals at ivy and nesting in a roadside verge in nearby Llandudno. The latest map includes these new records.
Latest Map
This note from John vanBreda relates to an issue whereby a single image of a Bombus (see screengrab below) was displaying in the species gallery outside the taxonomic hierarchy:
That had me confused for a while as well. Here’s how I found it. If you click on Content management > Taxonomy > List, this shows you the “taxonomies” that are loaded into Drupal. These are taxonomies in the linguistic sense not biological – i.e. hierarchies of terms, but in our case we of course use one to drive the hierarchy of the Species gallery tool.
Click on “list terms… Read more
As well as workshops at the upcoming BWARS AGM, two other opportunities to learn how to identify aculeates are listed in the BWARS Diary here
Join Adrian Knowles, bee & wasp expert on this fascinating day. Adrian is the Suffolk county recorder for bees, wasps & ants.
There are some 200 species of wild bees in the UK, called solitary bees because they make individual nest cells for their larvae. Some species nest in tunnels or holes in the ground, sandy banks and crumbling mortar while others use the hollow stems of dead plants such as bramble. They are harmless and do not sting or swarm so are safe to have in the garden and are very important pollinators.
Solitary wasps are also very beneficial in the… Read more
