A meadow at Dropping Well Farm by Ion Riley
Well, we’ve been busy again on Dropping Well Farm and have been enjoying the weather this year!
If you have been down to the heathland nature reserves recently you may have noticed some new features dotted about. These haven’t appeared by magic but are, in fact, the work of some of our lovely groups and volunteers that have been diligently working away to create habitats for all the wildlife that is making Dropping Well Farm its home.
A bug hotel by Joe Gillard
Pantaloon bee by Brett Westwood
I think some of you may recognise the bug hotel in the picture above. These simple and easy to make bee hotels provide 5* accommodation for various insects including cavity-nesting solitary bees. Unlike honeybees and bumblebees that work as a group, solitary bees make individual nest cells in tunnels. Different species prefer different types of nesting sites; ground-nesting species nest in the…you guessed it…ground! And the lovely bare sandy soils of our heathland make perfect nesting sites (keep an eye out for these nesting holes if you visit the reserve).
Solitary mining bee nests by Wendy Carter
If you could follow a ground-nesting bee into her tunnel, you'd see that there are branches off the main route; these are individual cells for each egg that she lays. The females collect pollen to provide food for each larva when it hatches and you can often see where their tunnels have been dug by the little mound of sand on the surface around the hole. Although ground-nesting bees are solitary, they will often make nests near each other so you may see a collection of holes, each of which is an individual nest. The next time you’re on the reserve, see if you can spot any of these holes in the sand; I can guarantee that once you notice one, you will start seeing them all over the reserve.
On the reserve, we help ground-nesting bees through creating scrapes of bare ground and also south-facing bee mounds (piles of sandy soil), you may see some of these in our future work on the reserve.
A cross section of a bee tunnel by Gilles San Martin CC BY-SA 2.0 www.flickr.com/photos/sanmartin/48325764237/in/photolist-2gCobxM-2gCob4F
At home you might be more familiar with red mason bees. These nest in cavities, like holes in walls, but just like the ground-nesters, female red mason bees collect pollen as food for the larvae and takes what she collects into her tunnel. When a female has collected enough food, she will lay an egg on the food store. She then closes this cell by building a wall...and then starts collecting food for the next cell and so on. The end result is a row of cells each with an egg and some food. Once the eggs hatch into larvae, they feed on the pollen in their cell until they’re ready to pupate. This is where the larvae develop into adult bees (most of you will be familiar with caterpillars doing this to become butterflies but many people don’t realise that other insects do it too).
Some species will emerge a few weeks later whereas others may spend the winter in this state. Others still will emerge as an adult in their cell but wait until spring before emerging into the great outdoors where they’ll be looking for food and a mate. Fortunately for our solitary bees on Dropping Well Farm, whether ground-nesting or cavity-dwelling, they don’t have far to go to find food as there is an abundance of pollen ready and waiting for them in our beautiful wildflowers meadows.
You can make your own bee hotel at home using our handy guide below and you can do this any time of year. 'Bee' ready to watch the tunnels getting blocked off as the bees create their nests!
If you would like to help support this habitat creation on our reserves, our conservation work parties will be starting up again after the summer break on 25th August and will be every 3rd Friday of the month! Please contact joe@worcestershirewildlifetrust.org.
