Busy as Bees

Erica heathers in bloom at Jacks- a haven for bees

Today is a bit of a mixed bag but yesterday was a glorious day at Jacks. We arrived in the afternoon after a morning spent clearing the last of the winter cabbages from the community gardens. Everyone took home something, which is great, but still a lot of stuff went to waste. Just as we arrived at the honey farm the sun came out, baking us in the first real heat of the year.

The sun was out and the place awash with honey bees. Everywhere you looked there were flowers, although the snowdrops are spent an abundance of crocuses, daffodils and flowering currants replaced them. Up above the willows were covered in pollen dusted catkins. That means pollen and nectar in plentiful supply for the busy buzzing army. The honey bees were joined by lots of bumble bees too, all carrying their distinctive "bags" of pollen on their legs. Jack told us they had been out foraging a lot in the last week as the weather suited them and the food was abundant.

pollen on the willow catkins

the flowering currant

Although it looked to me like there was still lots of pollen on the early flowering willow according to Jack the bees are now working mainly on the flowering currant. This is a plant I have in my hedgerows. I planted it for nostalgia, to remind me of days at the blessed well at home, cleaning and painting for the mass said there every year. It has a fairly pungent smell, the kind of thing you either love or hate! It begins to flower in February making it one of the earliest flowering shrubs, the splash of pink very welcome when there is nothing else blooming. After a few years I realised how good it was for bees, they loved it and came to it in droves, even on colder windy days.

Later in the afternoon Jack entertained the group with the definitive guide to bumble bees, explaining how all you had to do was look at the arses of the bumble bees to identify them! This got a great laugh as he explained, the foxy arsed bee, the buff arsed bee, the red arsed bee and the blond arsed bee! Although most people don't really notice much difference in the bees we are losing populations of them. Reading up on bees I found a link to a report in today's Irish Independent about the Burren being the most important habitat in Ireland for bumble bees. I took this bit from it;


" Bees are Ireland's most important pollinators and provide a vital ecological and economic service to society.The contribution bees make to agriculture and the horticultural sector in Ireland is worth €50m each year.

Unfortunately, of the 101 different species of bee in Ireland, around 30 are now threatened with extinction.
The Burren features three- quarters of all the species of bumble bee found in Ireland.

drunken bumble bee in the heather

"In the Burren, the first step is to figure out where the rare species are and if they are still healthy and that was the primary aim of the blitz in July. Despite knowing how important the Burren is for bees, we don't have particularly good data on bees there."The first thing is we need to know where they are and then we need to nurture them. Landowners in the Burren can help with that," Dr Fitzpatrick stated.

The National Biodiversity Data Centre has compiled a pocket-size book to help people identify different types of bumblebee."It is like a swatch book detailing identifying features. The main way to tell the difference between species is to look at the colour of the bee's tail. In the Burren, we'd love if people kept an eye out for bumblebees and took note of what they have seen so we can gather more data about the bee population there," Dr Fitzpatrick said. "

You can access the id guide on line from the national diversity centre or if you pay them they will send you a hard copy. The difference between bumble and honey bees? honey bees are slender, lean brown/amber coloured bees. Bumble bees are fat fluffy bees. Very scientific I know! Happy bee spotting.