Eyes on the bramble

The bramble is alive with insects at the moment, its flowers the lure that attracts flies, beetles and a multitude of bees. Although many of the visiting insects are familiar enough it is always worth spending some time at a flowering bramble to see what else might be attracted in. Over the years, for example, bramble has provided me with some of my best views of white admiral and black hairstreak butterflies, not to mention several interesting species of beetle.

Today though, it is the commonplace insects that are my focus, the bramble providing an opportunity to brush up on my bumblebee identification and to try out a new identification ‘app’ developed for the ipad by TouchPress . The most common bumblebee on this particular patch of bramble is the tree bumblebee Bombus hypnorum, a recent colonist whose populations here in the Brecks appear to be going from strength to strength. This attractive bee was first recorded in Britain back in 2001 but was not recorded from Norfolk until 2008, when an individual was found in Earlham Cemetery. Being one of the easier bumblebees to identify, with (in queens, workers and most males) a ginger thorax, black abdomen and white ‘tail’, you stand a good chance of spotting one this summer here in Norfolk. Tree bumblebees, as the name suggest, usually nest above the ground in holes in trees or buildings. They have also taken to using nest boxes of the type erected for hole-nesting birds like blue or great tit.

The arrival of the tree bumblebee is perhaps unsurprising given that its distribution elsewhere in Europe sees it established as far north as the Arctic Circle. The colonies of this species can be sizeable with perhaps as many as 200 workers supporting them, which might explain the numbers that I am seeing here on the bramble where they outnumber the white-tailed and buff-tailed bumblebees flying alongside them. Some of the other bees present will need more careful scrutiny, however, if I am to pick out some of the cuckoo bumblebees that might be present. Cuckoo queens take over the nests of true bumblebees, ousting the resident queens to secure the labour of their workers, which then help to raise cuckoo males and females.

A price worth paying

The environment has been taking something of a battering over the last 12 months. It seems that when the economy is struggling, it is the environment that is one of the first things to suffer. In an attempt to reduce costs, cuts within Government and its agencies seem to have fallen hardest on those responsible for looking after the countryside. Elsewhere, in a bid to get the economy moving, there is talk of loosening planning legislation and weakening the already poor environmental regulations. Then there has been the criticism of conservation-based NGOs, often from within their own ranks, with the suggestion that such organisations have been all too ready to rollover.

For me, perhaps the most worrying thing has been the increasing tendency to put a price on the environment and its natural processes. This approach argues that we undervalue our environment and that, as a consequence, the best way to address this is to give a monetary value to each natural process, something referred to as ecosystem services. The ‘value’ of pollinating insects to UK agriculture has, for example, been put at £400 million per annum. In some ways I can see the benefit of this. By presenting wildlife ‘value’ in the monetary terms that Government and industry are used to dealing with, we can at least communicate with them in a language that they understand. It is no longer just a chalkstream but an ‘ecosystem service’ chalkstream that delivers ‘x’ million pounds of value per annum. The problem with this approach, however, is that this is a measure of ‘value’ based purely on what the species, process or ecosystem has to offer us.

Wildlife and natural processes should have their own intrinsic value, something that exists beyond our rather narrow and selfish frames of human reference. The Buff-tailed Bumblebee should be considered as having ‘value’ simply because it exists and not just because it pollinates our crops. The value that we put on a single bee should be the same as that which we put on a Hedgehog, a Barn Owl or, for that matter, a human being.

The fundamental problem that I have with ecosystem services is that the approach is about what other creatures and natural processes do for us; it is not about our responsibilities towards our fellow creatures. We should judge the consequences of our actions by the impact that they have on the environment within which we live and the creatures with which we share it. While an ecosystem services approach may appear to go some way to doing this, it rather misses the point by incorrectly presenting value purely in monetary terms.

Bumblebees take up residence

While bumblebees have always been regular visitors to my town centre garden, this year is the first that I have actually witnessed a queen bumblebee take up residence. An abandoned small mammal hole in my main flowerbed, most likely that used by a colony of wood mice last summer, has been taken over by a nest of buff-tailed bumblebees. Throughout the day, a growing procession of worker bumblebees enter and leave the tiny hole in the woodchip mulch, near the base of one of my aquilegias. I am amazed by their industry.

The buff-tailed bumblebee is one of our most common and widespread bumblebee species, occurring right across England and Wales, and now expanding its range within Scotland. If you see a large bumblebee in spring, with two yellow bands on a black background and a buff or off-white tail, then the chances are that you have seen this species. The workers that are on the wing now are smaller than their queen, similar in colour and pattern, though with the tail white rather than buff. If you look closely then you may see that the white tail has a thin line of buff between it and the black of the abdomen.

The nest itself will be placed at the bottom of the long tunnel that drops down through the soil, and will consist of an untidy dark-brown comb, more than likely covered by a waxy cap. The nest will be where the first generation of workers would have been reared by the queen before they, in turn, go on to rear subsequent broods. Also present will be the stores of pollen, large quantities of which are stored in tall cylinders of wax. Right now, the colony is probably still rather small; buff-tails are notoriously slow in getting their colonies going. However, numbers will keep growing and, at its peak, the colony may number several hundred workers. The outcome of all this industry is not simply the workers, since these are means to an end. Later in the summer the first males and daughter queens will be produced. It is these that will set forth and continue the bumblebee line. If things go well, the colony may complete two cycles in a single season.

The worker bumblebees can be seen foraging around the garden, visiting many of the flowers that I have planted in the hope of providing suitable nectaring opportunities. Buff-tails are slightly shorter tongued than certain other bumblebee species and so are unable to gain access to every flower. Interestingly, they sometimes overcome this problem by biting through the flower tube (known as the corolla) to steal nectar. It is wonderful to see such resourceful creatures doing so well.