Kirk Mason joined the Trust as a volunteer in November 2020, after attending our session at the University of Derby online volunteers fair, where he is currently studying, in the October. Kirk explains why he wanted to help and how he is currently doing this . . .

As an aspiring entomologist, it’s the time of the year where I always get itchy feet. Soon, it will be time to find bumblebees and other amazing insects – Spring is drawing close! Though each year, chance encounters with some of these amazing animals feels increasingly rarer.

Through my Zoology degree, it became apparent that pollinators such as bumblebees are incredibly important to the wider landscape. The service they provide, supports life from the ground up, by helping many flowering plants reproduce. These plants provide food for lots of animals such as insects, birds and mammals – including us! When I learned that more than a third of bumblebee species have declined by 70% in Britain between 1900 and 1980, I was shocked. Shocked that creatures, so charismatic, industrious and important could cease to exist in the future because of our activities – not through ill intentions, but simply not knowing.

This led me to read into how we can reverse these declines and prevent bumblebee extinctions. It quickly became apparent that the Bumblebee Conservation Trust are leading the fight to conserve bumblebees in Britain. How? Through conservation projects, education, helping land managers, research and engaging with people. The Trust also trains members of the public to contribute to citizen science projects (BeeWalk), which are incredibly important in developing a greater understanding of the bigger picture in Britain. After learning this is what the Trust does, I thought “I want to be a part of that!”

So, how am I contributing? For now, I’m helping with public engagement online, by contributing to the Trust’s social media through writing and photography. When I started volunteering with the Trust, I immediately felt at home due to the community spirit amongst the staff and volunteers. The positive and supportive mentality of everyone involved makes for an excellent collaborative environment, where everybody shares a common goal – to conserve our bumblebees.

Once restrictions lift, I hope to help with face-to-face engagement and physical activities such as habitat management. Though there are many ways that we can help, some of which I hope to try! There are green-fingered activities such as bulb planting, growing seeds and cuttings. Surveying through walking outdoors, looking for bumblebees and documenting results is a crucial way of contributing to our scientific understanding of bumblebees. Talks, guided walks and fundraising are great ways of talking about bumblebees with people and helping at the same time. There are admin duties, preparing event resources and even data handling opportunities. Becoming a member of the Trust really helps and no matter your skill set, there are many ways to contribute in the fight to conserve British bumblebees!

See how you can get involved by visiting out volunteering page here. 

Our Science Manager Dr Richard Comont, tells us how to identify and record that bee you’ve spotted.

We’ve all heard that bees are struggling. But how do we actually know this? And how are all the individual bee species doing? The answer may be closer than you think . . .

With over 250 species in the UK, including 24 species of bumblebee, the vast majority of our knowledge of wild bee populations in the UK (and pretty much all other wildlife) comes from amateur naturalists. The names have changed over time – from the Victorian ‘gentleman scientists’ (although there were many famous females too) to ‘biological recorders’ to the current favourite term, ‘citizen scientists’. But the activity has remained the same over the centuries: volunteers note the species they see around them, and make a record of their sightings with four critical pieces of information:

• What (is it)?
• Where (did you find it)?
• When (did you see it)?
• Who (saw it?) (You!)

For at least the past half century, these critical wildlife records have been collected centrally by national recording schemes and societies – one for almost anything you can think of is www.brc.ac.uk/recording-schemes. These schemes and societies and the national Biological Records Centre work with recorders across the UK to check the data, make sure that species haven’t been misidentified, and carry out mapping and analysis work (as well as much more besides). They act as the custodians for our centuries-long national wildlife story, seen through the eyes of generations of people who were aware of their surrounding environment, and recorded what they saw on a day to day basis.

It’s easy to add your own stitch to this great tapestry of wildlife recording. At the Bumblebee Conservation Trust, we recommend three ways to record that bee: ad-hoc (one-off) recording, FIT Counts and BeeWalk.

Ad-hoc recording

Ad-hoc recording is the simplest. Firstly, find a bee. Secondly, identify it to species. Thirdly, submit the record. Fourthly, relax in the knowledge of a job well done.

Finding the bee is the easy bit! Visit a patch of flowers, or plant some yourself. You can visit our Bee kind tool to help, and they’ll come to you. To identify it, you’ll find that practice makes perfect. Assuming it’s a bumblebee, sit with a book – this is a good one on bumblebees; ‘Bumblebees – an introduction‘, visit our Bee ID pages or an app such as the Bee ID app and study the bees as they come and go, or take pictures and run them past an expert for checking – iSpot or the UK Bees, Wasps and Ants Facebook group are great for this. You can also share your sighting with us on social media. We’re always pleased to see pictures or videos of bumblebees in your gardens or elsewhere and can help identify which species you’ve found – check out our tips for taking photos for identification. You can find us on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.

Once you have an ID, you’re ready to record. At the Trust we recommend using the iRecord system – it’s quick and simple to use, available as a website or an app, and the data is instantly available to any relevant wildlife organisation. In particular, we work with the national experts at the Bees, Wasps and Ants Recording Society (BWARS) to make sure as many records as possible make it from iRecord into the national dataset, where they can be used for mapping and analysis. Experts from BWARS monitor records on iRecord and it won’t take long for your records to be picked up. There are several other apps and websites, but none that check data as thoroughly (so there’s more chance of it being unreliable) or share their data as widely (so it can’t and won’t be used for analysis of bee populations, for example).

Structured surveys

The two other surveys supported by the Bumblebee Conservation Trust are FIT Counts and BeeWalk and are more structured. This makes them slightly more complex to carry out, but means that analysis of the data can be more detailed (because we know a lot more about how the data was collected), so they can be more informative than ad-hoc records alone.

Flower-Insect Timed Counts (FIT Counts) are part of the National Pollinator Monitoring Scheme (PoMS), which is a partnership of research organisations and environmental charities, including the Bumblebee Conservation Trust.  They’re designed to be a basic, straightforward survey for anyone to do when they have a few spare minutes, or as an activity with a school group or on a bioblitz.  A FIT count basically involves ten minutes of sitting by a small patch of flowers and recording what visits those flowers, but at a very broad group level – bumblebee, butterfly, beetle, etc (for full details visit the PoMS site).  The aim is to help us all get a better handle on how the different pollinator groups are doing relative to each other, which is important as we have a lot more data on some (e.g. butterflies) than we do on others (e.g. beetles).

BeeWalk is the Trust’s own standardised bumblebee-monitoring project*. Essentially, volunteer BeeWalkers walk a fixed route (a transect) at least once a month from March to October, counting how many bumblebees of each species they encounter. From this we can get an up-to-date idea of how bumblebees are doing across the UK, and we publish this analysis yearly as the BeeWalk Annual Report. Visit our publications page to read our latest reports.

In Conclusion…

A biological record is a window on the world of wildlife as it is at the time. Collected together, they tell us stories about the world as it is now, and of how it used to be.  They inform us of the issues, point the way to solutions, and confer a kind of immortality on the recorders who have their names preserved alongside their data.

Please do join the army of citizen scientists across the country.  You don’t need to be an expert, or spend all your spare time peering down a microscope, or to have acres of land managed for wildlife: all you need is an eye for what’s around you and the motivation to help us all better understand our bumblebees, and indeed all our other species, are doing.

9 March 2020

The Trust has published a new position statement on managed honeybees. The statement has been prompted by concerns that, under certain circumstances, managed honeybees can have detrimental impacts on wild pollinator species, including bumblebees.

Our Senior Science & Policy Officer, Darryl Cox, provides the background on why we’ve decided to publish the statement.

Q1. What prompted the Trust to produce the position statement?

There is an increasing body of research which shows that, in some situations, beekeeping can have negative consequences for bumblebees (and potentially other pollinators) by increasing competition for food and by passing on diseases. These negative consequences are most marked in areas where there are fewer flowers or higher densities of honeybee hives, and could potentially be serious where vulnerable populations of wild bees are present. This statement aims to mobilise that research into action and highlights important steps that can be taken by beekeepers, conservationists, and anyone else with an interest in helping bumblebees, to lessen any potential negative impacts of managed honeybees.

Q2. Is all beekeeping bad for wild bees?

No. The message is not that beekeeping is bad, and it’s definitely not something we want to avoid or prevent. Our aim with this statement is to help inform people of best practice and encourage responsible beekeeping and well-thought-out hive placement. Keeping honeybees is important economically for honey and wax production, and for pollination of some crops and wild plants, as well as being firmly embedded in our culture. Several of the Trust’s staff and supporters are beekeepers, and are also some of the biggest advocates for wild bee conservation. The important bit is finding the middle ground that balances wild bee conservation and beekeeping, and making sure that rare wild bees aren’t inadvertently harmed.

Q3. What are the main recommendations?

The main recommendation is to take a precautionary approach to how we do beekeeping so that we do not accidentally end up causing problems for our wild pollinator communities. Five specific recommendations are made in the statement which outline how the precautionary principle can be applied in practice.

The position statement is available here. 

 by Jack Reid, Outreach and Volunteering Officer at Bumblebee Conservation Trust

So, you kidnapped a bumblebee…

Each year, the Trust receives dozens of e-mails and phone calls from well-intentioned beenappers who have been out and about and found a tired-looking lone bumblebee that they’ve rescued and taken home with them to care for. In case you’ve been considering the practicalities of taking a bumblebee home, we have written up this useful guide to caring for your new friend, without taking it home!

Should I take a bumblebee home?

No! Bumblebees have their own homes.

At all times throughout the year, bumblebees have important jobs to be doing – whether it’s queens who are searching for a nest site or gathering pollen for their first clutch of workers; workers who are out, working hard to gather enough pollen and nectar to support their queens and siblings; or males who, despite their work ethic, are vital to ensuring there is a next generation of bumblebees.

For this reason, it’s very important to leave the bumblebees to what they’re supposed to be doing – they can’t support their nests if they can’t get back to them!

What should I feed bumblebees?

Bees need flowers!

Bumblebees are exceptional at identifying the nutrients and foods they need when they are foraging on flowering plants out in the wild. Our knowledge of bumblebee feeding habits is constantly evolving – but nobody knows what they need better than the bumblebees themselves. So we recommend that, rather than taking a tired-looking bumblebee home, you first consider whether they are in danger where they are, or if they’re simply resting!

For more information on if and when to move bumblebees, and when and what to feed them, please click here.

When should I release them?

The best time to leave your bumblebee alone was before you picked them up. The second best time is now!

Bumblebees navigate using landmarks, like buildings, or rocks, or trees. If they can’t find locations that they recognise, they may struggle to find their way back home to their nest when you release them.

If possible, bumblebees should be released near to where you found them. If not, placing them outside on or near to flowering plants is the next best option.

So what do I do if I find a tired bumblebee?

This is a great question – for information on what to do if you find a tired bumblebee, and when to feed, and/or possibly relocate them, please click here.