Mayo's garden bumblebees searching heartily for early flowers
COUNTRYFILE
A FRIEND has garden bumblebees searching for early flowers.
These will be overwintered queen bees, which have been pregnant all winter long.
Like hibernating bears, queen bees sleep happily through their pregnancy.
Unlike bears, before giving birth (well, laying eggs actually), the bees have to find somewhere safe where they can construct the nest that will be home to a whole colony of important insects the whole summer through.
If you do see an early bee, don't hurry to send it on its way, but embrace it.
Not literally, which might not work out well for any of the parties involved, but figuratively, for Queen Bee will bring much more to your garden and home than you could ever imagine.
Her sonorous tone as she and her offspring work among the flowers will add peace to your surroundings.
Her antics, should you find the time to stop some of those less important things, will entertain you. And her visits to your currant bushes and fruit trees will ensure a happy harvest through the months ahead.
The earliest bees we are likely to see are the white-tailed and the buff-tailed bumblebees – apart from the faithful domesticated honeybee, that is.
These latter insects will even be seen on mild days throughout the winter, gathering nectar from late-flowering ivy and the few garden plants that continue to flower through the winter.
There have been reports of some bumblebee families surviving the whole year round, though these are infrequent and quite possibly another symptom of a changing climate.
Queen bumblebees might be seen crawling on the ground while flexing their wings intermittently, as if something was wrong with them.
They are merely looking for somewhere to set up home. If we disturb them at that time they will leave the site they are investigating and we shall lose out.
On the other hand, if we allow them their space (not that they need a great deal of that), we shall reap the rewards of having these pretty garden guests all summer long.
Ireland has just over 100 different types of bee. Some, such as the great yellow bumblebee, are struggling to adapt to the changes we have wrought upon their world and are close to extinction.
Others, including the delightfully named hairy-footed flower bee and the ivy bee, are recent arrivals to this country that now find our climate less objectionable than they previously might have done.
Given that the United Kingdom presently supports about 270 species of bee, there is obvious room for expansion in the variety we see here.
Continental Europe enjoys upward of 700 bee species. Worldwide, about 20,000 bee species have been described.
Every one of them is a specialist in one thing or another. We could do worse than get to know the few we are likely to meet in our day to day lives.
We could also do better in other things. Last year the European Union granted a 10-year extension in licensing glyphosate, an active ingredient in Roundup – the world's most widely used herbicide.
Let's face it: it is not just those who use chemical sprays who are deprived of many good things. We are all losing out. Perhaps, given another 10 years, it won't be big business and profiteering that gets to dictate living conditions for the whole world.
In the meantime, mind those bees. We need them.