Jennifer Jones Ecology

Now, a tad late but here is the recording of my FSC presentation on the Long Mynd Bilberry Bumblebee project.  There are more FSC BioLinks videos from these two playlists: Natural History Live and FSC Virtual Meet Ups . Please give it a watch to learn about this species and the great work of the volunteers.  I also have a post here  with some more detail on the project and bilberry bumblebees .

Slightly more creatures are finally emerging.  The winter honeysuckle ( Lonicera fragrantissima ) in our garden was positively buzzing with bees this month.  We had buff-tailed bumblebees ( Bombus terrestris ) and early bumblebees ( B. pratorum ) on the flowers and I managed to catch this honeybee ( Apis mellifera ) really filling up with honeysuckle pollen.  It was fascinating to watch the honeybee combing the pollen into neat little balls to bring back to the hive for the larvae to eat. Buff-tailed bumblebee ( Bombus terrestris)  on honeysuckle 26th February 2021 Honeybee ( Apis mellifera ) on honeysuckle 26th February 2021 As bumblebees and honeybees are both social bee species they have worker bees which go out to forage for the hive/colony and maintain the nest.  Honeybee colonies are alive all year but workers won't be seen out in winter and they will instead use the food resources like honey they produced during the warmer months.   In...