News: June 2004

You have until the end of June to contribute to a national survey on bumblebee nests in gardens and the wider countryside.

The survey is being organised and administered by the Rothampstead Research Station. Conservationists are concerned about bumblebees: many species are not as common as they once were and now only six are widely encountered. However all of these are regularly found in gardens and the scientists want to find out to what extent they use gardens and the wider countryside for nesting.

The survey will only take a few hours of your time in June. Full instructions (including pictures and an identification guide) are available from the link shown below. If you make the effort to help, you are likely to spend a few very enjoyable hours learning something quite new and in doing so you will be contributing to one of the most important research projects ever to have been conducted on these characteristic insects of our gardens and countryside.

Rothampstead Research Station. 2004. The national bumblebee nest survey. Viewed on the web at http://www.rothamsted.bbsrc.ac.uk/pie/BumblebeeSurvey/ on June 15th 2004.