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Pollinating the Fowey Valley

By Dr Cathy Horsley, Conservation Officer, West Country Buzz

This year, we have been developing a to create habitat for bumblebees.
brand new project in the Fowey Valley, We will collect real-world bumblebee
Cornwall, and we are ready to get and habitat data, and compare this
started in January 2020. to what the model has predicted. Our
data will also be used to refine and
In this new and cutting-edge project
within the Trust’s Conservation & Science improve the model, and we hope to
team, we will be testing out the University be able to promote its use amongst
of Exeter’s predictive Bee-Steward model farmers, landowners and conservation
at a landscape scale. It is important to bodies, to help inform landscape-scale
be able to make sense of bumblebee management decisions.
movements across whole landscapes to
make our conservation work efficient and
effective. The ways in which bumblebees
respond to their environment are
complex however, and the model’s aim is
to help us to understand and tease apart
these responses – and their effects on
bumblebee populations - to inform land
management decisions.
Photo: White-tailed bumblebee
Bee-Steward simulates the growth, (Bombus Lucorum) by Laura Spiteri
survival and behaviour of bumblebee
colonies in a mapped landscape. The Visit bumblebeeconservation.org/
model predicts the best places to carry pollinating-the-fowey-valley/
out land management changes to The Bumblebee Conservation Trust is working in
increase bumblebee populations. To test partnership with the Duchy of Cornwall Estate,
these predictions, we will be working with Duchy of Cornwall Nursery, The Lanhydrock Estate
Company, the National Trust, Trewithen Dairy,
partners in the Fowey Valley, Cornwall, and the University of Exeter. Pollinating the Fowey
Valley has received funding from the Prince of
16 Wales Charitable Foundation.