Beginners Bumblebee ID Day
Event Information
About this event
This one-day course led by Dr Richard Comont from The Bumblebee Conservation Trust will provide an introduction to bee identification with a focus on bumblebees. Learn about bumblebee ecology, the basics of recognising bees and how to identify eight common bumblebee species. Gain all the skills needed to carry out a BeeWalk including planning a transect and recording and submitting your results.
What is a BeeWalk? BeeWalk is a national recording scheme run by the Bumblebee Conservation Trust to monitor the abundance of bumblebees on transects across the country.
Programme
09.30 Arrivals and refreshments
10.00 Bumblebee Ecology and Surveying. This covers background on bumblebees, how/why/why to survey them, including the latest results from the BeeWalk and how you can get involved.
11.00 Refreshments
11.15 Bumblebee Identification. This covers identification of bumblebees, starting at the beginning and making sure that your bee is a bumblebee and not one of the other flower-visiting fly or bee species, and focusing on the 'Big 8' - the widespread and abundant species that make up 95-99% of the bumblebees that you'll see on a day-to-day basis. Also covers helpful equipment and books.
12.30 Lunch
13.30 Field Session in Three Hagges Woodmeadow. Opportunity to go outside and practice catching and identifying bumblebees
15.30-16.00 Finish
Organiser Woodmeadow Trust
Organiser of Beginners Bumblebee ID Day
Woodmeadow Trust (formerly known as Hagge Woods Trust), established in 2013 to specifically address this catastrophic decline in biodiversity, is a pioneering charity taking practical action for nature and people by creating ‘woodmeadow’ and inspiring others to plant and look after these exceptional habitats.
Their flagship site Three Hagges Woodmeadow, near Escrick, York is the centrepiece of their activities and has transformed from a 25-acre arable field into a teeming wildlife habitat.
The creation of woodmeadow, and its recognition as a key conservation habitat, goes a long way to realising the aims of the UK’s 25-year Plan for the Environment. A woodmeadow is one of the richest habitats in temperate Europe. It is a mosaic of trees and grassland and management plays a key part. Woodmeadows are extremely botanically diverse – in time they can have more than 60 plant species per square metre and the edges are particularly rich in biodiversity.