THE LITTLE THINGS

Simon Ford, Land and Nature Adviser

Insects do not always have a good reputation. Humans have a ‘love/hate’ relationship with insects or invertebrates and in reality, probably more of the latter.

If I am being honest, there are quite a few insects that I am not so keen on. Number one for me are horse flies, which sneak up quietly on you on a warm humid day – often in marshy or wet areas while I am doing some surveying. The first time you realise that they are around, is when you have a nasty bite and a reddish raised lump, as you have involuntarily done a bit of blood donation!

Number two for me are mosquitoes and midges. Lying in bed in the dark, perhaps on a foreign holiday or camping when you hear the high-pitched buzz overhead and when it goes quiet, you know they are feasting on you! I particularly remember a trip to Scotland in June and the Florida Everglades where hundreds and thousands descended, despite all of the most potent repellents, leaving us with itchy spots.

House flies are annoying and not something you want landing on your food, as you don’t know where they have been. I have no problem with the insect which most people probably have as their number 1 baddie - the wasp. Ok, they will sting if you antagonise them, but if you ignore them and don’t go flapping around, they will do an important job of controlling lots of pests, just like ladybirds and greenfly.

Conversely, most of us rather like some groups of insects, usually because they look pretty or produce something useful. Almost everyone likes butterflies, (although gardeners may not be so keen on small and large whites, which lay eggs of brassicas). We are lucky in Dorset to have one of the richest butterfly habitats in Britain.

The other insect which most people are keen on is honey bees, probably because they produce honey, but also because they are important pollinators. However, we forget that there are over 250 other species of bees, from bumblebees to mason, potter, mining and solitary bees that also do an incredibly important job of pollination.

Older readers will no doubt remember going on a drive and having to regularly stop to clear hundreds of insects that had been splattered on their windscreen. If you go out today, you will only see an occasional insect casualty. In fact, entomologists have devised a simple citizen science method to monitor insect biomass (or numbers), by asking people to first clean their number plate and then drive a set distance and then count the number of splats. Buglife, the insect charity has found that there has been an alarming 64% decline in insects in the UK since 2004.

Whatever we might think of insects, they are fundamental to life. They are the first link in the food chain, as we will remember from the nursery rhyme, ‘There was an old woman that swallowed a fly’. We hear every day of losses of many birds and mammals, but is it any wonder, when we have destroyed the very building blocks of life. Some people may have read Rachel Carson’s, chilling Silent Spring, which highlighted what was happening with the use of predominantly agricultural pesticides in the early 1960s. In the intervening 60 years, scientists working for multi-national agri-chemical companies have developed even more potent insecticides, while their colleagues have done an equally effective job of creating herbicides to kill plants, many of which are vital food and nectar for insects.

Our biodiversity or wildlife crisis is as critical as our climate crisis. So, however annoying some insects might be, we must learn to love them and create places that will allow them to thrive. Ditch those dreadful insecticides and sprays and plant flowers that will attract insects and then we will see not only bees and butterflies, but swifts and insectivorous birds, hedgehogs and so much more returning.

WHERE HAVE ALL THE BEES GONE?

We appear to be living in a dual reality currently when it comes to bees. I am observing more and more species of bees in our garden, as well as in some of my clients’ gardens and woodlands. However, my recent stay in London for the Chelsea Flower Show as well as hearing from people as far afield as Norfolk and Sidmouth, are asking me ‘where are all the bees?’

This year has also been the busiest swarming year in my experience since 2018. After a long cold spring, which prevented any early hive checks, suddenly the temperatures soared, the rain stopped, and the colonies had been able to quietly build up ready to make the most of the conditions for procreation.

There is much panic from the general population when seeing a swarm of bees. Memories of all those ‘killer bee’ films of the 1970s certainly didn’t do anything to warm people to the wonder and sheer beauty of a colony of honey bees swarming.

After the shortest day on 21st December, the honey bee colony begins preparing for spring. The numbers inside the hive need to expand from their reduced cluster of around 10,000, to a full summer size of 5070,000 bees. Consisting of a single queen and the rest female worker bees, it’s only as the weather warms up that the colony starts rearing male bees – the drones.

As a beekeeper, when you start seeing drones, you know that now is the time to check the colony, inside if at all possible to see if they have enough room. If the colony run out of space or feel healthy enough to expand, or if they are sick in some way and need a fresh start, they will swarm. The earlier in the season they split and swarm, the better their chances of survival, both the swarm and the bees left behind in the original hive to create their new queen.

To increase their chance of survival, the swarming bees fill up their stomachs with honey to enable them to start building wax comb as soon as they have swarmed into a new location. They require 8kg of honey to make 1kg wax comb. An average hive will contain around 2kg of wax. This is why many conventional beekeepers don’t like their bees to swarm – because they leave the beekeeper with no honey! There are various methods beekeepers can employ to prevent the swarming, adding more space (more super boxes), clipping the queen’s wings so she is unable to fly (I have found that a determined swarm will carry a clipped queen and tend to settle in the ground rather than hanging from a branch.), crushing queen cells created inside the hive to rear the next queen (as if we know better than the bees) or splitting the colony before they get a chance to swarm. The last method is my preferred one if I have colonies in an area where swarming could be upsetting for neighbours, or the public, when The Newt is concerned.

Swarming is a wonderful way for the bees to expand naturally. By positioning bait hives in strategic places, I can entice swarms straight into them, not losing the swarm. Something I am noticing is that due to many middle-aged trees being felled, the cavities you would normally find in those trees are no longer around. This does cause a problem as colonies increase. Perhaps that is why I have had more than the usual calls from people with bees moving into roof spaces, chimneys and even door frames.

When on the one hand there seems to be an abundance of bees, these are the honey bees – the ones we manage and can increase by breeding more. The bees we are losing rapidly are solitary and bumble bees. Whilst in London, I walked, on World Bee Day, from the City through to Charing Cross. Some areas have now been pedestrianised and planted with ‘wild’ flowers as well as other bee-friendly plants. Stopping a while specifically to spot some bees, I was horrified to find that I didn’t see a single bumble or solitary bee on beautiful blooming alliums that literally should have been covered. The following day I sat in Battersea Park for an hour and a half, under a holly tree in full bloom next to a flowering, and beautifully scented, mock orange. In that time I saw two honey bees and two buff-tailed bumble bees. In our garden, our holly tree when in bloom is covered in bees and we can hear it buzzing from across the garden.

I heard of people in Norfolk with quiet gardens and a couple in Sidmouth that really shocked me as they shared that their cotoneaster-covered fence was silent this spring. I wasn’t surprised by the city being devoid of bees, or even Norfolk with its large chemically treated farmland. I was very surprised by Sidmouth though. ‘What’s changed in your area since last year?’ I asked. They live on a fairly new housing estate and lived there around 5 years. ‘Nothing’, they replied, ‘other than all our roads being dug up as they put in super fast broadband… surely that wouldn’t have anything to do with it?’

We know that bees communicate with each other and plants through electromagnetic frequencies (EMF). We also know that manmade electromagnetic ‘smog’ pulses, causing disruption on the natural world wide web of communication systems. Combine this EMF ‘noise’ with chemical agriculture, lack of habitat and forage, is it any wonder the bees have left? Where have they gone, other than taking refuge in the overgrown, under-tech gardens of people like me? Whatever is going on, it has become very serious, and we all really have to take note. Let’s take more seriously the invisible damage that we are creating – after all, it can’t be affecting bees and not ourselves… paulacarnell.com

Paula’s weekly podcast, Creating a Buzz about Health, is available on all popular listening platforms.

On Foot THE HOLLOW AMID THE FERNS

Emma Tabor & Paul Newman

Distance: 3 miles

Time: Approx. 2 hours

Park: Car park in Mapperton, donation box Walk Features: This is a shortened version of a previous and favourite walk around the Mapperton Estate, giving you the opportunity to experience the particularly secluded valleys in this area of West Dorset with a series of gullies and hillocks which host a diverse mix of woodland and coppices, and an enigmatic-looking fern-clad enclosure at its centre. There are some fine views near the start of the walk across Hooke Park and a patchwork of fields towards the sea before delving into one of the valleys on the estate.The walk has a couple of short, steep sections up then down at the start, with a longer, gentler climb back towards the end. There is also a fine view of Mapperton House towards the very end.

Refreshments: Coach House Café, Mapperton House >

Each month we devise a walk for you to try with your family and friends (including four-legged members) pointing out a few interesting things along the way, be it flora, fauna, architecture, history, the unusual and sometimes the unfamiliar.

For July, we walk an easy route around the Mapperton Estate which also allows you time to enjoy a visit to Mapperton House and Gardens. It's an ideal summer walk; an easy route where foxgloves, hawthorn blossom, beech and oak line the way and if you are lucky, you may see a peregrine falcon or red kite, as well as other raptors.

The Estate is responding to the biodiversity crisis by rewilding hundreds of acres of unproductive farmland and opening up the countryside to visitors for the first time. The existing sense of ‘wildness’ in this corner of Dorset makes it the perfect place for such a project.

Mapperton House doubled as Bathsheba

Everdene’s Farm in the 2015 film adaptation of Far from the Madding Crowd and the final scene was shot on nearby Mythe Hill.

Directions

Start: SY 503 998 Look for the car park signed in Mapperton by the village hall.

1 Turn left out of the car park onto the road and walk up past houses, then in 250 yards bear off to the right up a road signed as a dead end. Keep going uphill, first right then left, past a fine row of beech trees, and soon there are good views opening out to your right across a patchwork of fields towards Hooke Park and the sea. This is a good place to see passing raptors including buzzard, peregrine falcon and kestrel. At the top, bear right and follow the track in front of a house, Coltleigh Hill. Walk for another 300 yards along this track until you reach a bridleway sign to turn right, through trees, and just before reaching another house.

2 The track heads downhill, towards woods. Ahead are fine views including a good view over a hilltop enclosure which sits on a spur above neighbouring valleys and there are some lovely solitary oaks spread across nearby the fields. After 1/3 mile and as the track reaches the bottom, turn right through a large metal gate and onto a path.

3 The path now follows a lovely wooded valley floor, along a secluded section of the Jubilee Trail, lined with a magnificent dense mixed woodland, a remote and peaceful spot. Follow the path for 2/3 mile, the river just below, and pass Hold Acre Coppice, to soon meet the path coming from Burcombe Wood. Where a joining path crosses the stream over wooden boards, keep right and start walking uphill, with Bentover Coppice and the stream on your left and open fields on your right. Passing through a metal gate, stay on this path as it winds up out of the valley, and into a field between woods.

4 Eventually, as you near the top of the valley, the path reaches a metal gate with a cottage on your left- keep straight ahead on the path and where this meets the drive coming from Mapperton House, cross the drive and go through a gate into a field. Go straight across this field, heading to the left of buildings and looking for a gate and bridleway sign in the far hedge. There is a lovely prospect of the front of Mapperton House and surrounding buildings from here. At the gate, turn right onto the road and back to the car park.

Welcome

Upcoming Events & Workshops

Willow Sheep Workshop with Jo Sadler – Thursday 20th July Summer Fête – Wednesday 26th July

+44 (0)1308 424116 symondsburyestate.co.uk Symondsbury Estate, Bridport, Dorset DT6 6HG

LOST DORSET NO. 36 MARNHULL

David Burnett, The Dovecote Press

Watching the renaissance of our nearest pub, the thatched Bottle Inn at Marshwood, which until four months ago was derelict and seemingly doomed, reminded me of Dorset’s rich history of brewing. This is Marnhull Brewery in 1885, when it was known as Jennings, Styring & Co. The lovely bow windows in the pair of 17th-century cottages were put in by the brewer Thomas Burt in about 1799. The Brewery was bought by Eldridge Pope shortly before the First World War, who in turn sold it to Hall & Woodhouse in 1935. By the 1970s the brewery buildings had been sold and converted into houses and flats, the now gabled main building remaining a local landmark. Only Hall & Woodhouse and Palmers remain of Dorset’s four principal breweries, though happily small micro-breweries flourish throughout the county.

dovecotepress.com

The Dovecote Press has been publishing books about Dorset since 1974, many of which are available locally from Winstone’s Books or directly from the publishers. This photograph is taken from Lost Dorset: The Villages and Countryside