Bumblebee-bagging in the Cairngorms
This spring and summer, we’re asking the outdoor community to help us better understand how the rare Blaeberry bumblebee is faring in the Cairngorms National Park. Could you be the first to bag-a-bumblebee in these hills?
The Blaeberry bumblebee (Bombus monticola), also known as the Bilberry or Mountain bumblebee, is a small but bright and distinctive bumblebee – and one that hillwalkers, climbers and mountaineers may come across when they are ‘oot and aboot’.
This upland-specialist bumblebee is a key pollinator in the hills, working hard to keep our moorlands flowering and blaeberry blooming in what can be quite an inhospitable landscape.
Without pollination, there wouldn’t be berries or seeds for the birds and small mammals, and we wouldn’t have the extraordinary sight of purple-flowering heather splashed over our moorlands in late summer. Our environment would be less healthy, less colourful and less diverse.
However, the Blaeberry bumblebee is under threat. It’s already been designated as a conservation-priority species by the Scottish Government because of the challenges that climate change poses to this cold-adapted, mountain-dwelling species, which is most at home on moorland over 300m. The Cairngorm National Park could be one of the few strongholds for the Blaeberry bumblebee left in the UK, and we are in an important position to support its conservation.
To best protect and conserve these precious pollinators we need to understand exactly where they are found and how they are doing in these areas. Recording your bumblebee sightings is a practical way to contribute to knowledge and conservation in the hills – as mountaineers and walkers, we can collect valuable information from areas that are inaccessible to many people.
What does a Blaeberry bumblebee look like?
Blaeberry bumblebees are on the small side – typically around the size of a thumbnail – but their distinctive appearance makes them hard to miss or mistake.
They have fiery orange-red hairs covering more than half of their lower body, a soft yellow collar, and a faint band of yellow behind their wings, all against a background of black.
It’s the extent of the bright orange-red tail that helps the Blaeberry bumblebee stand out from similar bumblebees, (none of which have more than half of the abdomen covered in red hairs).
When and where should I look for Blaeberry bumblebees?
Blaeberry bumblebees are generally found in upland areas, at or over 300m above sea level. They can pop up in unexpected places, including gardens, agricultural fields and road verges close to hills or moorland. Their favourite flowers include blaeberry, heather, white clover, thistles and ragwort.
These bumblebees are most active between May and July but could be spotted as early as March or late as September, depending on the year and the weather
Keep an eye out anywhere that seems like suitable habitat for them. We would love to see Blaeberry bumblebee records coming in from all over, but we are particularly keen to hear about sightings in new areas where they haven’t been recorded before, especially in the Cairngorms National Park. Our Skills for Bees: Scotland project is working with partners in the national park to increase and improve long-term bumblebee recording and to conserve priority species.
To help with this, we’ve created a map of the top peaks across the Cairngorms where we have identified the right habitat present for Blaeberry bumblebees, but there are no publicly-available records at all. If you’re heading to these peaks over the summer, could you be the first to bag a bumblebee in these hills?
If you have any questions about bumblebees or would like help identifying a bumblebee from a photo so that you can add your sighting to iRecord, please contact enquiries@bumblebeeconservation.org.
OK, I’ve seen a Blaeberry bumblebee. Now what do I do?
Rejoice! You are one of the lucky ones! Now make your sighting count…
If you see a Blaeberry bumblebee, take a photo and make a note of the date and location. Don’t worry if your photo isn’t to a professional standard! Blaeberry bumblebees are such a distinctive species, it’s often possible to confirm their identity even from slightly out-of-focus photos.
We recommend using iRecord to log your sightings, which is simple to use and is available through their website or in a handy app. Wildlife sightings submitted to iRecord are checked and verified by a local expert, before feeding into a publicly available national database. This means your sightings can be accessed and used by anyone, including conservation organisations, planning authorities, students and researchers. The four key pieces of information needed are:
- What you saw (species, with a photo if possible)
- When you saw it (date)
- Where you saw it (6-figure grid reference)
- Who saw it (your name)
If you use the iRecord app, most of these details will be added automatically for you, using built-in GPS, or you can search using the map. You just need to press the big green ‘+’ symbol on the menu bar at the bottom of the screen and type in “Bombus monticola”.
When using iRecord, some details are compulsory, but others aren’t. You don’t need to worry about ‘life stage’ or ‘sex’. In the ‘comment’ section, you can add further details if you’d like to, such as what type of flower the bumblebee was seen on, or anything else you find interesting. You’ll need to make an account to use the app but you can use the website without an account by clicking here.
An alternative simple way of making your sighting count is to contact your local records centre which keeps a database with all the wildlife sightings in their constituency. They may also be able to help with identification. In the Cairngorms National Park, this would be the North East Scotland Biological Records Centre. You can contact them or submit records through their website, or email them directly.
Shop our Mother’s Day gift guide!
Whether it’s for mum, grandma, nanny, or the mother-figure in your life, our gift guide has got something for everyone!
Shop from our business supporters
Our business supporters generously donate a portion of their profits to the Bumblebee Conservation Trust. By purchasing from them, you’ll be supporting our vital work to save the UK’s bumblebees!
Shop our Teemill range
We have a bee-rilliant selection of clothing, homewares and accessories sold through our Teemill site. These print on demand products help to reduce wastage, and everything is made from organic materials using renewable energy. Proceeds from your purchase goes towards the work of the Trust.
Shop the Bumblebee Conservation Trust shop
One of the easiest ways to support the Trust is to shop directly through our online store. From books and cards, to pin badges and seeds, you’re sure to find something to give to mum that gives back to bumblebees too!
Gift Membership
Give the gift of a year’s membership to the Bumblebee Conservation Trust! Your loved one will receive a welcome pack buzzing with a pin badge, car sticker, wildflower seeds, and more, plus we’ll send our ‘Buzzword’ membership magazine three times a year.
Where are all the bumblebees?
Science Manager, Dr Richard Comont, gives us an insight into why we’ve been seeing less bumblebees this year.
As the years roll by, there tends to be one thing that happened during the year that attaches itself as a label. 2020 was the year of Covid, 2022 was the 40°C heatwave. For a lot of people, 2024 was The Year of No Bees.
It all started off so well. Back in early March the skies were blue and queen bumblebees were emerging from their winter dormancy in high numbers – in fact, several species reached record numbers in March or April. But then the wheels came off. In June, volunteers across our BeeWalk network were recording around 11 bumblebees for every kilometre they walked. In a ‘normal’ year, they would be recording 21, almost twice as many. 2024 stood out as the worst June count on record.
Some species were faring even worse. The Red-tailed bumblebee (Bombus lapidarius) is a widespread and common species, understatedly beautiful with a jet-black body and bright red tail. The flight season started well, with around a third more sightings of overwintered queens than usual in March and April. But then – nothing happened.
Red-tailed bumblebee © Jade Oliver
In a normal year, those queens would find themselves a nest site and start producing workers in May, with numbers ramping up in June and staying high through July and August, workers gradually give way to males and new queens. During 2024 they just never managed to get going. In June, sightings were 83% down. Instead of seeing a Red-tail every 250-300 metres, BeeWalkers were only seeing one individual every two kilometres.
The immediate cause seems to have been the weather. After that burst of early-spring sunshine, the spring and early summer settled down into a pattern of dull, gloomy, damp days interspersed with heavy rain. This makes life incredibly difficult for bumblebees, especially in the early stages of nesting where the queen has to balance finding a nest site, foraging for herself, foraging for her developing offspring, and incubating her brood. Cool, damp weather means the queens spend more energy keeping themselves and their brood warm, which increases the need for foraging but decreases the time available for it.
To make things even more difficult, that foraging would have become more difficult in the poor weather. Food from flowers is less accessible on cold, damp days, especially as flowers close up or get damaged in heavy rain.
Unfortunately, the BeeWalk numbers show that many queens didn’t manage to walk this tightrope and nest successfully.
How can I help bumblebees?
In response to our latest BeeWalk data, we’ve launched an urgent appeal to help secure a future for bumblebees. We can’t control the weather, but we can:
- Make habitats more resilient to climate change
- Influence decision makers to prioritise pollinators, not pesticides
- Lead the fight to secure a future for bumblebees
By donating to our appeal, you’ll be helping to secure a future for our bumblebees.
