Fantastic bees and where to find them
Monitoring bare ground on RSPB reserves 2019
During the winter of 2018/19, some unusual habitat creation got underway on a number of RSPB reserves, thanks to support from The Banister Charitable Trust. Instead of planting trees, or creating ponds, excavators were hard at work scraping away vegetation to leave patches of bare ground.
This might seem like an odd thing to be doing on a nature reserve, but provision of bare ground is actually one of the most important things that we can do to help some of the nationally important assemblages of bees and wasps which make RSPB reserves their home.
That's because many species of bee and wasp need bare ground in which to make their nests. That can be flat areas of ground, or for some species, south-facing banks are preferred, which is why we've tried to make a mixture of the two on each reserve.
Scroll down to take a quick tour of the four reserves which are giving bees and wasps a home.
The Lodge RSPB
The first reserve to be surveyed was the home of the RSPB, The Lodge near Sandy, Bedfordshire. This reserve lies at the end of the Greensand Ridge, and represents the largest area of lowland heathland to remain in Bedfordshire. Click here to find out more.
Cliffe Pools
Next up is Cliffe Pools in Kent, situated on the banks of the River Thames and home to a fantastic array of invertebrates, including some nationally threatened bees and wasps. Click here to find out more.
Broadwater Warren
Heathland and woodland restoration is returning Broadwater to its historic habitat of centuries ago, a wildlife-rich mosaic of heathland and native woodland with scrubby woodland margins, scattered stands of pines and rare woodland mire. Click here to find out more.
Farnham Heath
Once a gloomy conifer plantation, Farnham Heath has been transformed into a beautiful heathland, and is home to more species of bee & wasp than any other RSPB reserve. Click here to find out more.
Survey results
The Lodge
This was the most heavily surveyed site, by virtue of being the location where I am usually based. Visits were made to bare ground areas across the spring and summer, and revealed that a wide range of species were making use of the newly created habitat.
In the spring a number of Andrena mining bees were found on the largest area of bare ground. These included the nationally scarce species Andrena trimmerana and Andrena bimaculata, alongside commoner species such as the beautifully patterned Ashy Mining Bee, Andrena cineraria, shown here.
Wherever you find a lot of hard working bees, you're likely to find another less industrious set of insects looking to take advantage of them.
Sure enough, cruising over the Andrena nesting areas were a number of the wasp -like Nomad bees, which lay their eggs inside the nests of mining bees, where they hatch out and consume the host egg and the painstakingly collected provisions.
Amongst them was a single female which looked a bit unusual, and which on closer inspection turned out to be the first ever Bedfordshire record of the Variable Nomad Bee, Nomada zonata. Formerly only known from the Channel Islands, it was found in Kent and Essex in 2016, and has since spread rapidly northwards.
As the year progressed a new cast of characters emerged. The early summer saw Red-banded Sandwasps, Ammophila sabulosa, appearing across the bare ground patches, which was bad news for the caterpillars which they use to stock their burrows. Pictured on the right is a female sand wasp with an exceptionally large Pebble Prominent moth caterpillar, which the wasp struggled heroically to haul across the ground and into a burrow.
Also present in large numbers was the wasp Cerceris rybyensis, which stocks its nests with solitary bees. That might explain the near absence of bees at this time, although one notable exception was a single Nomada subcornuta, the rare cuckoo of the scarce mining bee, Andrena nigrospina. The latter is a species which I was hoping to find using the bare ground but which sadly eluded me for this year at least.
A final visit was made to the main area of bare ground in late August, and revealed extensive nesting by Bee-wolves. These honey-bee predators used to be extremely rare in the UK, but have increased significantly in recent years, and can now be found across the south of the UK. A female returning to her burrow with a Honey Bee is pictured here.
Making their home alongside the bee-wolves were a number of spider-hunting wasps, Episyron rufipes, and despite the apparent absence of any nesting bees, two more cuckoos were observed patrolling the area, namely the Black-horned Nomad, Nomada rufipes, and Black-thighed Epeolus, Epeolus variegatus.
In total, 31 different species of bees and wasps were found on the bare ground areas which have been created at The Lodge, an excellent example of giving nature a home.
Cliffe Pools
Time constraints and the vagaries of the British summer meant that only one visit was possible to each of the other sites, starting with Cliffe Pools in mid-July.
Two areas of bare ground have been created on the reserve. The first is a large area of stony ground at the end of an old pipeline, which was showing a fair amount of vegetation regrowth, but was still alive with bees and wasps. Most obvious were dozens, if not hundreds of the Green-eyed Flower Bee, Anthophora bimaculata, pictured here in flight over the nesting area.
These hyperactive little bees emit a high-pitched whining noise as they fly, a noise that was to become very familiar over the next couple of days, along with the frustration of trying to photograph their erratic, high-speed flight!
Also present here were good numbers of the distinctive wasp Dryudella pinguis, which appears to have declined in recent years, but is clearly faring well here, and a few nesting Pantaloon Bees, with their remarkable, flare like hind legs.
Approaching the second area of bare ground, my ears told me before my eyes did that a lot of bees were making their home here. An audible buzz was emanating from the sandy area at the edge of an area of water, which on closer inspection turned out to be the noise of hundreds, or maybe even thousands of Silvery Leaf-cutter Bees.
This is the smallest of the UK's leaf-cutter species, and like its larger relatives it carefully snips semi-circular sections out of leaves, and uses them to construct nesting cells for its eggs. The picture on this page shows a male silvery leaf-cutter pausing for a brief rest above the bare ground area.
Scroll down to load a slide-show (large screens only) of a selection of the other insects I found at Cliffe, including the nationally rare Shrill Carder Bee and the wasp mimicking hoverfly Chrysotoxum verralli
The slideshow should play automatically (but unfortunately does not display on smartphones), or you can use the arrow keys or the bar at the bottom to scroll through. When you're done scroll down to move on to Farnham Heath.
Farnham Heath
Fortunately the weather stayed fine and sunny for the following day, as I made the journey down to Farnham Heath. I soon found myself in the midst of the some of the finest heathland in England, trying not to get distracted by Dartford Warblers amongst many other things as I searched out the bare ground areas.
As at Cliffe Pools, Green-eyed Flower Bees were present in abundance, as were Bee-wolves, and their fellow bee-hunters, Cerceris rybyensis. A couple of Farnham specialists also seen on and around the bare ground areas were the attractive Mottled Bee-fly, Thyridanthrax fenestratus, and the Heath Sand Wasp Ammophila pubescens, pictured here dargging a caterpillar into its burrow. This is a scarcer relative of the Red-banded Sand Wasps found only on southern heathland, so it was a real treat to find it nesting here.
Pausing only to admire a particularly fine Grayling, a characteristic, though sadly much declined, heathland species, I headed over the road to see what was using the bare ground patches there. The answer was largely more of the same species, but with notable additions of a Small Velvet Ant, Smicromyrne rufipes, and another heathland specialist, the Bowed Jumper, Evarcha arcuata.
Perhaps unsurprisingly I didn't manage to add any species to Farnham's already extensive list of bees and wasps, but it was encouraging to see a range of species, including some of the scarcer heathland specialists, making a home in the bare ground created for them.
Broadwater Warren
The first time I visited Broadwater Warren, I got wet, very, very, very wet, so it was a relief when the weather stayed fine and sunny for my July visit.
Broadwater had the most varied range of bare ground habitats, ranging from scrapes amongst the heather, to trenches dug out of the earth, and perhaps most intriguingly, the walls of the former quarry shown here.
The now familiar Green-eyed Flower Bees were again present in good numbers, joined here by their cuckoo bee, the appropriately pointy sharp-tailed bee, Coelioxys rufescens. There were again good numbers of Cerceris rybyensis, and a surprise encounter with the nationally notable Golden-haired Robberfly, Choerades marginatus.
Continuing around the site, a steady set of additions were made to the species list, including the tiny Lasioglossum parvulum and the shieldbug hunting wasp Astata boops, along with its distinctive cuckoo wasp Hedychridium roseum.
The final location for the day was in the quarry, where two new species were recorded using tiny holes in the freshly exposed vertical walls. Several of the common wasp Crossocerus quadrimaculatus were busily heading in and out, whilst a slightly different, somewhat furtively acting wasp turned out to be the cuckoo wasp Nysson trimaculatus. This is itself a scarce species, and its presence here indicates that at least one of the infrequently recorded Gorytes species of wasp are also present here, as these are the hosts for Nysson.
In total, 63 different species of insect were recorded on and around the bare ground patches created on the four reserves, including several nationally rare species, and one species never previously recorded from any RSPB reserve. More time spent surveying, especially at different times of the year, will undoubtedly reveal more species using these habitats, and it will be fascinating to see how the communities establish and evolve over time.
The slideshow below (large screens only) contains all of the images taken during survey work in 2019, demonstrating the incredible diversity of species which have been given a home on RSPB reserves by the hard work of our reserves staff. The RSPB reserves and ecology teams would like to thank The Banister Charitable Trust for their generous grant donations which have funded the bare ground creation.
