W.I and The Forgotten Bees

 Another birthday posy from my village WI - the benefits of going to two!

Everyone felt safe enough (from covid threats) to sing Jerusalem at the start of the meeting which was good.

 

The speaker was brilliant and he gave a really good talk on "The Forgotten Bees"......that is all the hundreds of species of bee that are Not Honey Bees. In fact Honey Bees are causing all the other bees real problems because they carry some very nasty diseases and can get quite aggressive. He had photos from the US of Honey Bees unable to find enough food on their own attacking other bees and stealing pollen from their pollen sacs. 

More and more people are keeping bees but the way land is farmed means that there isn't enough food for them and gardeners prefer cut grass instead of dandelions and clover so we are no help either.

The speaker, who's appropriate name really is Hawk Honey, was a long distance truck driver until an injury forced him to find a new job and he now works part time for Suffolk Wildlife Trust and gives talks about bees and advises on gardening for wildlife.

He had slides and videos of some of the various different solitary bees - some only feed on one type of flower or one family of plants. So many bees are on the Red Endangered lists but there's still time to help them. We should grow a wide variety of flowers for our gardens and pick those that have easily accessed pollen......and (special note for Pat) dandelions are brilliant for bees.

My favourite bee of those he told us about - not sure of it's Latin name - was a solitary bee who makes it's home only in empty snail shells. It has to be laying on bare ground because this clever bee burrows under the shell taking out the soil so the shell sits in a little hollow. Then it lays its egg inside, closes up the shell and then..............covers it all with little twigs and dried grass - how amazing is that!

When I got home I searched out the bee chart that I'd got from Friends of the Earth last year, along with the wild flower seeds.

This is just a few of the bees we should be seeing.

After the talk there was coffee and cakes of course and one of the ladies had made Red Velvet Cup Cakes to celebrate her Ruby wedding, which were lovely. The last thing at WI is usually the raffle and what a surprise - I won something and picked a box of chocs rather than some soap!

 

 

 Quite a late ending as there had been lots of business to get through - arrangements for outings and other meetings and we sang The National Anthem at the end.

 

It's so good to get back to normal meetings and now it's nice just to have a 5 minute walk home from this WI. Something I've not been able to do since 1991.

Back Tomorrow

Sue