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Recruit a friend or make a donation to help BBCT conserve the UK’s bumblebees

I would like to join the BBCT: Name…………………………….………………………………………. Address……………………...……………………………………….…..…………………………………….……..……………………..………… Postcode……………………………... Tel …………………...………. Email…..……………………………… Date ………………………….

Please enclose a cheque or fill in the standing order form (below)

Membership type: Child (under 12) £9 Standard £16 Joint £20

concession/BWARS member £12 Family £25

Fellow £50 Overseas £25 Life £500

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Signed………………………………………...… Date ………….…………

Post to: Bumblebee Conservation Trust, School of Biological & Environmental Sciences, University of Stirling, FK9 4LA

Instructions to your bank or building society to pay by standing order

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Address

Name of Account Holder(s)

Account number: Sort code:

Please pay the undernoted standing order to:

Account name: Bumblebee Conservation Trust Bank: Bank of Scotland

Please pay the amount of £ ……………… In words ………………………pounds Commencing ……../………./………….. (first payment) and thereafter annually

Signed Date

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BuzzWord Newsletter

of the Bumblebee Conservation Trust

Issue 7 2008

www.bumblebeeconservationtrust.co.uk

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Contents of Issue 7:

BBCT News (Page 3) Honey bees need conserving too (Page 6) Bees in the news (Page 8) Centre spread (Page 10) New children’s book - ”Never give up bumblebee” (Page 13) Letters (Page 14) Member’s photographs (Page 16) Classifieds (Page 17)

Who are we: Dave Goulson - Director Ben Darvill - Director, website manager Lucie Southern - Conservation Officer Bob Dawson - Scottish Conservation Officer Christiane Nitsch - Trust Administrator Gillian Lye - PhD student and BeeWatch co-ordinator

Contacts Bumblebee Conservation Trust, School of Biological & Environmental Sciences, University of Stirling, Stirling, FK9 4LA. Tel: 01786 467818 Emails: Membership issues: membership@bumblebeeconservationtrust.co.uk General enquiries: enquiries@bumblebeeconservationtrust.co.uk BeeWatch: beewatch@bumblebeeconservationtrust.co.uk Full details of trust staff and activities can be found on our web pages: www.bumblebeeconservationtrust.co.uk

Please Renew Your Membership! You may have received a letter with this magazine, notifying you that your membership has expired. We very much hope that all of our existing mem-bers will choose to stay with us, and that you all feel that we are doing a good job. Without your help we will not be able to continue our efforts to save our many beautiful bumblebee species!

Cover photograph: A com-mon carder bee, Bombus pascuorum, taken by Robert Smith

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18

Gardening for

bumblebees

Produced by the Bumblebee Conservation Trust

by Dave Goulson

Get your

Garden into shape now!

Make sure you get

a copy of our ‘Gardening for

Bumblebees’ for only £5 minimum donation including postage and pack-

aging.

ADVERTISE IN BUZZWORD Buzzword goes out to our rapidly growing membership of >2,000 3 times per

year. If you would like to advertise in Buzzword, contact

enquiries@bumblebeeconservationtrust.co.uk to find out about our competitive rates

BBNO

Benton. NN98. Bumblebees £40.00 Benton. Bumbles of Essex £18.50

Corbet/Prys-Jones. Bumblebees. pb. £9.95 Kearns & Thomson. Natural History of Bumbles. £19.95

Goulson. Bumblebees– behaviour & ecology £27.50

Postage extra Bee Books New and Old

The Weaven, Little Dewchurch, Herefordshire, HR2 6PP

Telephone:01432 840529

Write or phone for list. Access/Visa Welcome

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BBCT News We have been incredibly busy this spring. Our Conservation Officers Bob and Lucie have been whizzing around the country, creating links with various stakeholders and es-tablishing our Esmee Fairbairn funded scheme, which aims to help rare bumblebees, primarily through landowner advisory work. With the Esmee project in mind, we have recently produced an ad-visory leaflet for farmers and croft-ers, and published articles in farm-ing magazines. There is now a page on our website for farmers and land managers wanting to help bumblebees, which will be developed further as we get feedback. We are also running training days for Country-side Rangers, Reserve Wardens and Land Managers, which are going really well. Hopefully existing reserves and green spaces will be even more bumblebee friendly in the future. We are delighted with progress on our Bumblebee Meadow (the world’s first) at RSPB Vane Farm. Last year was a blaze of colour due to all the poppies and cornflowers, but they are annuals and will not appear in such numbers again. The question on our minds over the winter was whether the perennials that bumblebees really love, such as the clovers, vetches and trefoils, would come through as hoped in the meadow’s sec-ond year. Thankfully, by late May the meadow was starting to bloom again, and it is now a mass of red and white clover, bird’s foot trefoil, kidney vetch and tall spikes of viper’s bugloss (see page 10). Amongst them are innumerable happy bees! This year we have already seen nine bumblebee species in the meadow, including the rare and beautiful blaeberry bumblebee, the forest cuckoo bee and Barbut’s cuckoo bee. SNH (who funded the project) have also funded a small seed harvester, so we are hoping to collect wildflower seeds from the meadow for use on projects elsewhere. The ID walks we've run at Vane Farm have produced several blaeberry bumblebees, so if you choose to visit yourself you are almost guaranteed to see one We still have a few primary school education packs to distribute, if you know of any primary school teachers in Scotland then do please put them in touch with us. Good news also about the England and Wales pack – we have made real progress towards its production thanks to an enthusiastic educational consultant who got in touch. We are still waiting for funding but we will keep you updated on this! We would also like to say thank you to those who visited our stalls at Stoneleigh, Gar-dening Scotland and the Bath and West Show – it was nice to put a few faces to names. Hopefully we will get to meet more of our supporters at some of the other shows and events that we will be attending this year (see below).

A bee walk with BBCT ‘s Dave Goulson at Vane Farm Bumblebee Meadow, June 08

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Forthcoming events in 2008 It has been a busy summer so far – most of our weekends have been filled with some-thing! Please be aware that events can be added or changed at short notice so if you have internet access, please try to check our news and events page on the web for any up to date announcements—or sign up to our email newsletter.

Friday 1st

– Sat. 2nd

August - The Perth Agricultural Show - We'll be there with a stall, so please come along and say hello Saturday 2 August - 11am – 1pm, Bumblebee Walk, Ep-enede, nr Confolens, Charente, France. Directions: From Ep-enede, go towards Pleuville. Af-ter 500m turn left. At the Horse chestnut tree turn left again.

Contact us if you would like to attend Sunday 3

rd August - 2 – 4pm, Buzzing about in the Botanic Gardens. A potter around

the flower borders of the Leicester University Botanic Gardens. Learn how to identify the “Big Six” bumblebee species and their cuckoos. Please contact us for more infor-mation and to reserve your place. SORRY—ALREADY FULLY BOOKED Thursday 20th November - 7 - 9pm. Irreplaceable – the World’s most invaluable spe-cies. The ever-popular and thought-provoking Earthwatch Debate returns – choose between bees, bats, fungi, plankton and primates. Dr. George McGavin will be cham-pioning bees - good luck George! At the Royal Geographical Society, 1 Kensington Gore, London SW7 2AR - contact the Earthwatch Europe Events Department on (01865) 318856; events@earthwatch.org.uk For more information on any of these events, get in touch on 01786 467818 or email enquiries@bumblebeeconservationtrust.co.uk

Walk a Bumblebee Transect? This year BBCT is launching a new long-term bumblebee monitoring programme, de-signed to act as an early warning system if particular species start to decline. At pre-sent we only have information on bee distributions, but we have almost no data on how abundance today compares with last year, 10 years ago, or 100 years ago. So far 15 volunteers scattered around the country have agreed to do a monthly 2-5 km walk

Betty the Giant Bumblebee visits the BBCT stand at Vane Farm Open Day. Look out for Betty wherever there is a bumblebee stand at a show—you never know when she might appear!

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Thank-you to our new Fellow Members! The BBCT would like to ex-tend a special thank-you to those who have joined as Fellow members: Elizabeth Johnson, Cambridge Nick Mann, Shepton Mallet Alison Hunt, Manchester Hugh Worsnop, Norfolk Raymond Welsh, Kinross

Children’s Gallery If your child would like to see their drawing in buzzword or on our online gallery then please do send it in.

Kate (aged 6) sent in this lovely picture of the insects in her garden.

Classifieds

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Member’s Photos—Opportunistic bees!

White-tailed bumble-bee. This bee is probably collecting honeydew deposited by aphids (greenfly) on the leaves. We are fascinated by all of this 'non-flower' feed-ing behaviour. Evi-dently bumblebees can sniff out sugary deposits - but from how far away? Is the Tate & Lyle factory covered in a mass of hungry bees? Photo-graph by Samantha Bailey.

Enid Brown sent us this amazing picture of a very thirsty buff-tailed bumblebee refreshing herself at a honey pump in the honeybee tent at the Royal Highland Show in Edinburgh last year.

Another buff-tailed bumblebee, this time feed-ing on honeycomb from a recently destroyed honeybee nest. By Daniele Muir.

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near their home, recording and counting all the bumblebees they see. We hope that this scheme will run for many years to come. We are very keen to expand the number of transects, so if you can identify the more common bumblebees, and would like to help, please get in touch with Chrissie on: enquiries@bumblebeeconservationtrust.co.uk.

Beewatch 2008 – latest news Judging by the emails and photos we're receiving, workers are well and truly on the wing now. Please do carry on sending in your records, as we're very keen to ensure that this year is even bigger and better than 2007 (a tall order, given that we received nearly 7,000 records last year!). We've made a few changes to the website, including a registration page for BeeWatch, which you can reach via the surveys page. It would be very helpful (if you haven't already) if you could quickly fill in that form - it helps us to keep track of who is participating in the survey, and also who is happy for us to use their photos.

Can you help BBCT? It would be brilliant if you would consider helping us to reach more people. Our mem-bers are our life blood - we wouldn't exist without them, and it's through their kind sup-port that we are able to do what we do. The more members we can attract, the more we can ultimately achieve. Perhaps you could: Tell a friend about BBCT - do you know anyone who enjoys wildlife, or wildlife garden-ing? Many people haven't yet heard about BBCT, so could you tell them about what we do? We'd be more than happy to post factsheets or membership leaflets to you, for you to pass on - just get in touch. Distribute our leaflets - do you have anywhere nearby where you could put a stand of our leaflets? Perhaps a nature reserve or wildlife centre, or a public library? Maybe a friendly local garden centre? Get in touch if so, and we'll send you a batch of leaflets and a holder to put them in. Run an ID walk - if you can confidently identify the 'Big 6' bumblebees and a few of the others, then would you consider running an ID walk for us? We try our best to cover as much of the UK as possible, but there are still big gaps - we have never run an ID walk in the North of England for example! Let us know if you think you might be able to help.

Take part in the BBCT strap line competition

We've recently started using 'Saving the sound of summer'

Can you think of a better phrase? You could win a bumblebee nest box!

Email your suggestions to:

enquiries@bumblebeeconservationtrust.co.uk

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Honey bees need conserving too! By Norman Carreck & Dave Goulson As well as the ~22 species of bumble bee found in Britain, there are many species of solitary bee, and just one species of honey bee (Apis mellifera), the inhabitant of the white painted wooden hive in many a country garden. Only the honey bee produces honey in amounts large enough to be worth harvesting. Unlike other bees, where the queen or female alone lives through the winter, honey bees live all year round as colo-nies, consisting at the height of summer of a queen, a few hundred drones, and up to about 50,000 workers. Honey bees naturally nest in cavities such as hollow trees or caves.

Honey bees have almost certainly been in Britain since the time that suitable plants colonised after the end of the last Ice Age, when Britain was connected to the rest of Europe by a land bridge. Recent archaeological excavations at the site of the new Heathrow Airport Terminal 5 have found honey bees in deposits dating back to the Bronze Age. By Roman times, honey bees were managed in hives, and the Viking excavations at Jorvik found extensive evidence of beekeeping and the use of hive products such as beeswax. Honey bees are frequently ignored by conservationists, presumably because they are common and have been considered as domesticated, but they do have problems of their own. So-called “Colony Collapse Disorder” affecting honey bees in the USA and perhaps also in Europe has recently made headlines. In Britain the Varroa mite found its way here in the early 1990s, and whilst beekeepers had been successfully treating it until recently, it then became evident that the mite had become resistant to the most widely used treatment, leaving few effective alternatives. If left untreated, Varroa will kill colonies in a couple of years, meaning that wild colonies have disappeared from many parts of the country. Sadly, in the last couple of years, many beekeepers have also lost their colonies.

Agricultural changes in the post-war pe-riod have made many arable areas a desert for honey bees as well as for other bees. Fields of oilseed rape can provide a large honey crop, but honey bees need food throughout the year. In addition,

A swarm of honey bees on a tree branch Photo by John Free.

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Hello, My wife was attacked and stung by a bumble bee whilst emptying grass cuttings into a compost container. At first I was pleased to see the bees there and considered the hostility to be a one-off due to my wife inadvertently disturbing them. However, a few moments later my wife was stung again. I was then chased off by a bee as I was watering plants in a cold frame a few yards away, and the same thing was repeated shortly afterwards. I decided to leave them to settle down for a while and an hour later tried again. Once again I was attacked and this time I was stung. You're probably thinking we were mistaken in identifying them as bumblebees, but I'm quite sure they are. They are certainly not honey bees, hornets or wasps, and unless there's a large, furry species of bee other than the bumblebee which I am unaware of, I can't think what else they could be. Do you have any advice you can offer? Many thanks, Clive Ormonde Dear Clive—There is a bumblebee species that has recently arrived from the continent, called the Tree Bumblebee. It has a habit of using bird boxes and, from what I can gather, can be aggressive. This species is rather distinctive, with a brown body, black tail and a clear white tip. We are trying to establish the distribution and spread of this bee, since it was first recorded in southern England in 2000. As for getting some enjoyment from your garden this year there may be a couple of options. The first, if feasible, is to put a screen between you and your garden, and the nest box. This may help divert the flightlines of the bees away and give you some much needed freedom. The other is to contact a local beekeeper to remove the nest, but make sure that they move the nest at least 2 miles away or the bees may well return.

Ralph Goodson took this photo of a tree bumblebee (Bombus hyp-norum) sitting outside its nest in his garden in London. Note the brown thorax, all-black abdomen and white tail. All the bees in the nest are much darker than normal - usually the thorax of tree bum-blebees is entirely ginger-brown on top, but these have lots of black on them. This European species only arrived in the UK about 7 years ago and continues its advance northwards - we are particularly keen to hear from any-one that sees this species in the North of England or Scotland

Dear Bumblebee team, Gardeners who grow winter brassicas (such as kale) might consider leaving one or two of them to go to flower in late winter/early spring. I did that this year (due to laziness, it has to be said, rather than a brilliant plan) and found that the flowers were heavily visited by early-flying bum-bles when there weren't many other flowers around for them. Mark. Dear Mark—Great idea! Queens of short-tongued bumblebees such as the buff-tailed like bras-sica (cabbage family) flowers - in the countryside they will often visit oilseed rape. The Bumble-bee Conservation Trust's sniffer dog, Toby, is currently looking to see if he can find more bum-blebee nests on farms with oilseed rape fields (he's getting a bit of help from his handler Steph, particularly with driving the car!).

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Letters

Dear Editor, In Buzzword Issue 6, 2008, there is a letter on page 15, from Susan in Hertfordshire about her observation of a bumblebee visit-ing bracken. As a botany student in Australia I found it common knowledge that the Australian bracken bore nectaries. We tended to wonder why as there were no flowers to pollinate. In referring to Willis, J.C. “A Dictionary of Flowering Plants and Ferns” under Pteridium I found the following “It has a creeping rhizome, bearing two ranks of leaves. At the base of the leaf is a nectary, which ants visit.” I hope this may answer Susan`s query. Dr. Stella Thrower, Isle of Man Dear Stella—many thanks! Yours was one of several letters along similar lines. There is al-ways something new to learn about bumblebees! Having delved into the scientific literature, I discovered a number of articles that examine the function of nectaries in bracken. They are apparently only active in the young leaves, which are relatively palatable, and are thought to have evolved to attract ants, ladybirds or parasitic wasps that help protect the plant against herbivorous insects. How bees discover them, since they have no brightly coloured petals or obvious scent, remains unknown so far as I can find out.

Hello BBCT Team, I was absolutely shocked when my wife showed me the instructions on a spray we had been using to control aphids (which are currently very numerous) in our garden. When I think about it, then yes I suppose all pest controls must be harmful to bees and I'm wondering how much of this must be responsible for bee decline. I feel sure that an enhanced publication regarding this must be promul-gated via national press, which needs the backing of or-ganisations such as yourselves. Regards Peter Jackson

Dear Peter— I couldn’t agree more! There is a huge issue here. Garden Centres stock a vast armoury of chemicals most of which are entirely unnecessary in a garden situa-tion. To make matters worse, gardeners have no training in pesticide use and I’m sure they often apply them incor-rectly. Many are highly toxic to bees. A related issue is the widespread use of neonicitinoid insecticides in farming. This class of chemicals was recently banned in Germany due to its high toxicity to creatures such as bees, but is still widely used here. Some garden composts such as Levington’s container compost are laced with it. The chemicals are systemic, meaning that any plants grown in the compost become toxic throughout—hence even gardeners that refuse to use chemicals may be unwittingly bringing them into their garden. BBCT would like to see much tighter controls on the use of insecticides in gardens and on their inclusion in composts.

Is it safe? This compost contains Imidacloprid, toxic to bees.

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managed woodland tends to contain fewer very old and hollow trees than might have existed naturally, reducing the availability of nest sites. Lifestyle changes have led to fewer people with the time to keep bees. As a consequence, it is thought that the number of honey bee colonies in Britain may have fallen from approximately a million to about 250,000 over the last 100 years

The original strain of dark coloured honey bee native to north western Europe (Apis mellifera mellifera), was until recently thought to have become irrevocably mixed in Britain with other strains imported from Italy and other areas over the last 150 years, but recent molecular studies have shown that pockets of genetically distinct native honey bees still exist in various areas such as Ireland, Cornwall, Derbyshire, and Scotland. These strains will have co-evolved with the native flora, and there is evi-dence to suggest that some may have some degree of natural resistance to Varroa. They are therefore worthy of preserving in their own right, but their unique genetic material could be threatened by the thoughtless introduction of imported honey bees nearby. At present, however, there is no legal means of ensuring their preservation. The Bee Improvement and Bee Breeders’ Association (http://www.bibba.com/) en-courages beekeepers to keep and preserve the native dark European bee. The Brit-ish Beekeepers Association (http://www.britishbee.org.uk/) can provide information for those thinking of taking up beekeeping, and is currently campaigning for more funding for honey bee research in the UK.

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Bees in the News—stories from around the world!

At BBCT we like to keep upbeat and send out the positive message that it is not too late to help our bees. However, the stories below illustrate just how urgent the plight of pollinators around the world is becoming.

Human Bumblebees Newsweek reports that in China, bees are now so rare that humans have to pol-linate flowers. Sechuan Province is known for its pear orchards, which have supplied China for millennia. Tragically, intensive farming methods and overuse of pesticides means that there are virtu-ally no bees, and without bees there is no fruit. In desperation, villagers now climb through the trees armed with a brush made from feathers and a pot of pollen, hand-pollinating every flower. This illus-trates just how bad in could get else-where in the world, and most countries do not have the manpower needed to resort to ‘human bees’.

Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) In the last year the media has been full of stories about bee declines, and they have often jumbled up bumblebee de-clines and honeybee declines. Honey-bees in North America have been suf-fering from CCD, characterised by the rapid disappearance of most or all of the adult bees in a hive. Beekeepers in the US lost 30% of the hives in the winter of 2007, and a further 35% in 2008, so there are not many honeybees left! CCD has been variously blamed on dis-eases, pesticides, genetically modified crops and even mobile phone masts. The more credible explanations suggest it is probably the combined result of sublethal effects of pesticides and/or the combined action of a range of parasites and diseases. Worryingly, there are signs that it is now happening in Europe. If we lose our honeybees, we are going to be more dependent than ever on our dwindling bumblebee popu-lations.

Dr Who and the mystery of the disappearing bees At the time of writing, the current series of Dr Who has contained 4 separate mentions of disappearing bees, often cropping up randomly in conversations between the Doctor and his sidekick Donna. In the latest epi-sode (21 June), Donna bemoans how things aren’t as good as they used to be (largely due to the fact that she is caught in a parallel time loop by a giant invisible alien stag beetle that is sitting on her back!). She sud-denly says “and you don’t see as many bumblebees as you used to”. Is writer Russell T Davies a fan of BBCT? We do hope so! Or is this leading up to some final episode in which the bees turn out to be aliens, or to being eaten by aliens? Next Saturday we may find out…..

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Never give up bumblebee By Marianne and Jean-Michael The idea to write a children’s book about a bumblebee came after we found one lying on the pavement in London. It had been raining heavily; unfortunately the already small, unkempt patch of grass where the bumblebee had found a shelter from the rain was being mercilessly destroyed by a gigantic pair of edge trimmers, and the poor thing found itself quite unexpectedly thrown onto the bitumen. There was an immediate connection. Since bourdon (French for bumblebee) is a masculine word, we instinctively assumed it was a boy. We picked him up carefully to save him from being inevitably stepped on. He was wet, exhausted, and looked alto-gether miserable. We took him in turns in our hands to hold him up to the warm sunlight, hoping to dry him off. We thought a little something to eat might do him good, so we gave him a piece of apple. Sure enough, it was not long before he stuck out the longest tongue we have ever seen, and proceeded to minutely lick the whole surface! We remained there for a good half hour; when it was time for us to leave we took our new friend –along with his fruity lunch– to the nearest flowerbed. By that time he was starting to move about determinedly, trying to shake the water off his back and legs like a miniature dog. That day when we got home we realised how privileged we had been, and we knew that this inspiring, uplifting experience was really something we had to share. Never Give up Bumble B is dedicated “to a little bumblebee who thought he would never fly again,” thanking him “for this magical moment.” We wanted children to un-derstand how fragile these creatures are, and how very easy and rewarding it can be for us to make a difference by offering a helping hand. We also wished to preserve the delightful sense of wonder we had felt by drawing the bumblebee the way it had appeared to us, just like a child would see it, rather than try to be anatomically accu-rate. Marianne and Jean-Michel are from the Champagne and Lorraine region in France and came over in 2005 to live and teach on the Scottish north coast. They are both vegans with an interest in animal rights and environmental issues. They write and illustrate books, mainly for children. Their first published booklet, Never Give up Bum-ble B, is available from the BBCT for £4.50 including postage and packing. An ideal birthday or Christmas present for a young friend or relative. Simply send a cheque payable to the Bumblebee Conservation Trust.

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Easy e-fundraising for BBCT Just a reminder that you can support the Trust while you surf and while you shop. We’re registered with several websites which allow our members to generate extra funds for the Trust, at no cost to themselves Amazon - Many of you will buy things online from Amazon - books, CDs, electrical equipment and so on. We're now an Amazon associate, which means that if you visit Amazon by clicking through from our links page, then you'll be donating between 5 and 8% of the purchase price to BBCT (at no extra cost to you!) Ecotopia - I know that many of our members prefer to shop ethically - and rightly so! The good news it that you can now do that online, and also generate funds for BBCT! Ecotopia have kindly agreed to donate 8% of all sales generated from the links on the BBCT pages. As with Amazon, simply visit our links page first, and click through from there. www.easyfundraising.org.uk - Use this every time you shop online. Not only will you raise money for the Trust when you make any of your purchases via this website, but you can also receive fantastic discounts yourself! www.easysearch.org.uk - Use this instead of your usual search engine (e.g. Google) and a donation will be made to the Trust every time you do. Everyclick - A bit like EasySearch, but powered by a different search engine, this web-site will also generate funds for BBCT once you've registered. As the name suggests, you'll be helping us and our conservation work with every click!

Primary School Education Packs We still have free bumblebee education packs for primary schools in Scotland, and hope to have them ready for schools south of the border soon. They have proved very popular with teachers and children alike—see below

Hello, We were given a very useful pack from your organisation which included items in Gaelic. For this we are eternally grate-ful. To that end our class did a project on Bees, particularly those on Tiree. I enclose pho-tos of the work of our class P1-3 Gaelic Ard-sgoil Thiriodh, Primary department. Tapadh leibh, thank you again Siusaidh NicNeill

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Woman in Bumblebee Costume Gives Birth

On a lighter note, the Telegraph reports that Ally Ashwell, 30, was in Blackpool on a Hen night, dressed as a bumblebee, when she began to feel unwell. Miss Ashwell, a human resources officer who lives in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, returned to her hotel room on her own because she “didn’t want to spoil the fun”. There, a few minutes later, she gave birth and delivered her son 14 weeks premature. Although tiny, baby Owen survived the cru-cial first few days and is now making good progress, according to medical staff. We wish them both well!

Leave a legacy…. If you have had a lifetime’s pleasure from bumblebees, why not help to en-sure their future by leaving a legacy to the Bumblebee Conservation Trust in your will?. As a small organisation most of our income is directly spent on conservation and any contribution, large or small, will be put to excellent use.

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Ruderal bumblebee Our Bumblebee Meadow at RSPB Vane Farm, Loch Leven. Perhaps not as visually stun-ning as the blaze of annuals we saw last year, but thanks to the tailored bumblebee seed mix we sowed, the meadow is now bumblebee heaven. The protein-rich pollen in the wall-to-wall flowers is attracting bumblebees from far and wide, including the rare blaeberry bum-blebee from the nearby hills

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