Page 12 - Bumblebee Conservation Trust Buzzword magazine winter 2020

Are we plants such as scabiouses, knapweeds and Harebell. You often have
to wait until mid-September to see it in numbers.
overlooking the I’m pleased to see the Trust recently produced a conservation
strategy for the Shrill carder bee (Bombus sylvarum) in partnership
with stakeholders and organisations. But is the claim in that report that
plight of the the Shrill carder bee is the rarest and most endangered bumblebee in
England and Wales actually true? The relatively strong population of
Broken-belted bumblebee in Scotland gives it a level of UK security
Broken-belted that the Shrill carder bee lacks. But take Scotland out of the equation,
and the statuses of the two bumblebees are pretty similar and if
bumblebee? anything it is harder to find the Broken-belted bumblebee.
So do we need a
conservation strategy
for the Broken-belted
Steven Falk is a professional bumblebee too? I reckon
‘pollinator expert’, artist, naturalist and we do, and urgently, given
photographer. Steven has worked on a that it lacks the national
number of publications and has written conservation priority
the popular ‘Field Guide to the Bees of statuses (Section 41 in
England, Section 7 in
Great Britain & Ireland’. Wales) of less threatened
bumblebees such as the
I first encountered this special bee at Moss carder bee (Bombus
Porthowan back in 1982. That’s the last muscorum), Brown-banded
time it was seen in Cornwall. I say that, as a carder bee (Bombus
lament rather than a boast. I don’t want me humilis), Red-shanked
or anybody else to hold that title. But like so carder bee (Bombus
many of our rarest bumblebees, the Broken- ruderarius) and the Large
belted bumblebee (Bombus soroeensis) Garden bumblebee
was once widespread using a variety of (Bombus hortorum).
landscapes. Today, it seems that the only
decent populations in England are within Unfortunately, the Broken-belted bumblebee is not as easy to identify
Salisbury Plain and the North Pennines as the Shrill carder bee. Females look so much like white-tails
area. Bumblebee expert Mike Edwards, tells and males are incredibly variable. But if you fancy searching for it,
me he saw it at Dungeness about 10 years check out scabious-rich grasslands near you, take lots of photos
ago but the status there today is unclear. and compare them with those on my Flickr site: www.flickr.com/
In Wales, there is just a thin scattering of photos/63075200@N07/sets/72157631610322753/ and do contact
recent records and it may even have gone the Trust if you think you’ve seen one.
from the wonderful Dowrog Common where I
encountered it in 1988. At all these locations Let’s hope that some sharp-eyed recorders hit the jackpot!
it requires extensive areas of late-flowering
unimproved grassland with an abundance of Photos top left: Broken-belted bumblebee worker (Bombus soroeensis); right:
male taken in Allendale (Bell’s Grooves Area); bottom left: queen taken on
Salisbury Plain; bottom right: knapweed (Centaurea nigra) by Steven Falk.

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