Page 13 - Bumblebee Conservation Trust Buzzword magazine winter 2020
P. 13

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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