The Shrill Carder Bee (Bombus sylvarum) In 1912 Frederick Sladen, in his delightful book, The Humble Bee, describes the shrill carder bee as “widely distributed in England and Ireland and common in a good many places but… rare in Scotland.” He doesn’t mention Wales. In 1932 in a fabulous little pocket book on bees, wasps and ants, […]
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What we have discovered about scarlet malachite beetles and the consequences for the conservation of the species We’ve had the pleasure of working on the scarlet malachite beetle conservation project for many years. Their species is in decline in the UK. We’re attempting to reduce that decline. Here are some of our findings. Thatch Courtship
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Celebrating Nature The weekend before last we were lucky enough to have a stall at the National Botanical Garden of Wales, as part of the Celebrate Nature event organised by the For the Love of Nature team – what a fabulous bunch of people. It was an amazing event supporting mental health charities, bringing together
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A Study in Scarlet Introduction – Breakthroughs We had some breakthroughs in 2021 and 22. Slowly but surely through managing and monitoring our little scarlet malachite beetle nursery cottages, we accumulated enough confidence to have another go at captive breeding, really just to find out what the larvae (beetle grubs) eat. Are they specialists on
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It’s all about the Ladybird Spider for us at the moment. Last month we conducted another ladybird spider translocation on the Dorset heaths. Today we launch our newest book, Lacey the Ladybird Spider along with our Ladybird spider T-Shirts. This Easter, our ladybird spiders will be on CBBC’s Deadly Predators starring Steve Backshall… he gave
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We really are conservationists Every product we send out is accompanied by a card thanking the buyer for supporting ‘our conservation projects’. What does this mean? Can artists, fashion brands or stationary suppliers actually help threatened species, or is it ‘Greenwash’? A lot of businesses offset their damage to Earth’s environment by supporting charities, planting
Chocoholics and arachnophiles unite! How hot chocolate may help save a spider. An update on the conservation of the ladybird spider project. I’ve just realised that I haven’t given you a full run down on the Ladybird spider conservation project. I’ll get that written and to you in the next few days. You can take
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Updates on our conservation projects First the bad news Not really conservation news, but in 2020 we had two cars die in Dorset. One mission was delivering Barberry plants to Butterfly Conservation. The other was to survey ladybird spider sites and deliver the plants that hadn’t quite made it before. For us this is one
