This month, the Cynnal Cymru team have been sharing photos and stories about birds, bees and other wildlife encounters. It is summer, after all, and nature is in full swing! Our Training Administrator Tom also took part in the Wye Valley BuzzWatch: Bee ID and Monitoring workshop, which you can read about below.

But first, why should we care about bees?

• Bees pollinate about a third of everything we eat; they play a vital role in sustaining our local food systems, ensuring we have fruits and vegetables and fodder crops for livestock.

• Twenty percent of the UK’s cropped area contains crops which are dependent on pollinators, and the value of pollinators to UK agriculture is over £690 million per year.

• ‘The value of honey produced in Wales is also considerable with a wholesale value in excess of £2 million in 2011.‘Action plan for pollinators in Wales

• The Bumblebee Conservations Trust reports that the UK is currently home to 24 species of bumblebee. Two bumblebee species have become extinct in the last century, with a further eight bumblebee species listed as conservation priority species due to large-scale declines.

• Wales is home to some of the UK’s most important populations of rare and threatened bumblebees, including the Ruderal bumblebee, Shrill carder bee, and the Brown-banded carder bee.

We have lost 97% of our wildflower-rich meadows since the 1940s, and as the number of flowers in our countryside have declined, so too have our bumblebee pollinators, and they are in desperate need of our help!

Honey bees Vs native pollinators

There is just one species of honey bee in Britain and Europe, the Western or European Honey bee Apis mellifera. In contrast, there are over 1500 other pollinator species in the UK, including over 270 wild bee species, as well as hoverflies, moths and butterflies. Honey bees are not at threat of extinction in the UK. But there is increasing concern worldwide that declines in wild pollinators may be worsened by high densities of honey bees. For example, one honey bee hive can contain over 40,000 bees. That’s 40,000 bees competing with other wild species for food and resources, which could put a strain on the native wild bees. Honey bee hives have also been known to spread disease to wild bees, devastating local populations. If, for example, a honeybee hive was introduced into an area where a rare bumblebee species had made its home, this could result in the end of that population.

The UK has also lost 97% of its wildflower meadows in the last century, which means bumblebees are struggling to find enough food and good nesting spots to survive. The use of insecticides can also directly kill or affect the ability of bumblebees to find food and reproduce, with herbicide use killing flowering plants, a vital food source for bumblebees. Shifts in seasonal patterns and weather also disrupt bumblebee behaviour and impact survival at key life stages, such as spring emergence, nesting, and winter hibernation.

Extreme weather events like floods, droughts and storms also impact bumblebee numbers. Floods can drown hibernating queens and underground nests. Droughts can cause plant deaths, reducing the amount of nectar and pollen available for bumblebees to feed on and collect, with storms preventing bumblebees from foraging for food, as they struggle to fly in wet windy weather.

How you can help support pollinators

From volunteering to making your green spaces more pollinator friendly the Bumblebee Conservation Trust has plenty of bee-friendly ways to get involved.

Read ‘An introduction to bumblebees’, by Dr Richard Comont. The book covers bumblebee biology, their decline and conservation and what you can do to help them in your garden and beyond.

Whether you are a business, community or an individual, you can join the ‘Bee friendly’ initiative supported by Wales Biodiversity Partnership to help make Wales a pollinator friendly country

If you want to learn more about the links between human activity and ecosystem disruption and develop the knowledge to enable you and your organisation to take action for nature recovery, then signing up for our Nature Wise Eco-Literacy course might be the next step for you.

Nature Wise is a science-based, action-focused course to help you to understand the relationships between people and natural systems. It shares knowledge, builds understanding and provide the tools to motivate and catalyse action. You can sign up to our online courses at the below link.

Tom talks about what he learnt at the Bee ID and Monitoring workshop

On World Bee Day May 20th, I was lucky enough to attend a Bee ID and Monitoring workshop that was organised by Wye Valley National Landscapes and delivered by the Bumblebee Conservation Trust. Our expert for the day was Dr Richard Comont (Bumblebee Conservation Trust Science Manager). During the morning session Richard took us through a presentation on the benefits of bumblebees and other pollinators, and the data showing their unfortunate decline over the years. We looked at what we can do as individuals to allow them to thrive and make sure their much-needed habitats are protected. We learnt how to identify different bees and the differences between the queen, other female workers and male drones.

Fun fact: Female bees, including worker bees and queens, are the only ones that can sting. The stinger is a modified ovipositor; the organ used for laying eggs and is therefore only possessed by females. Male bees (drones) do not have stingers.

After a wonderful lunch put on by the National Landscapes team, we collected our Bee ID kit and went to Trelleck Wet Meadows for an afternoon session of bee identification.

We had a great afternoon carefully catching and identifying bees. I caught three female worker Red-Tailed bumblebees. Sadly, I didn’t get a picture of these as I was far too excited at the time. One of the other attendees caught a Brown-Banded Carder bee which was the first time one was recorded in the Wye-Valley National Landscape. 

I went away from the day with new knowledge and skills that will allow me to record and document the bumblebees that I come across, and add to the baseline data of bumblebee populations across the Wye-Valley National Landscape to allow them to focus their conservation efforts in the most important areas.

Tom Kirkton is the Training Administrator at Cynnal Cymru