Hope through co-operation Can beetle conservation make the world feel a little better? At the present time it’s not always easy to feel good about the world but hopefully this will help. Last year, Forestry England told us they might have found a site for a trial introduction of scarlet malachite beetles. We have a […]
Scarlet Malachite Beetle Conservation Update Read More »
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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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
Seahorse and Seagrass Read More »
The Joy of Bees Honey bee swarms can occur anytime from mid-spring, through the summer. From my experience, they peak in July and quickly reduce as the month fades, with August swarms quite rare. I’ve always been fascinated by bees and started beekeeping when I was 16. My mentor was my first boss and he
Porpoisfully looking at Dol-Fins When we’re lucky enough to see dolphins (or unidentified cetaceans), it’s not always easy to tell which species they are. Sometimes they leap clear or poke their heads out of the water but, more often than not, all we see is a dorsal fin and a bit of back with no
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
A Not So Brief Introduction to the Scarlet Malachite Beetle Project Read More »
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
Octopus I have always considered octopuses to be a bit of a rarity on the seashore and hoped but never expected, to find one. About 4 years ago after a storm I found my first British Octopus dead on our local beach and then, about a year later, another one still just alive. The following
For the Love of Octopus Read More »
