Recently I attended a Mini Bee Symposium at the University of Northampton with Sam Gandy. Sam presented a paper on bumble bee and honey bee competition on lavender.
It was an eventful and interesting afternoon and evening with presentations from an assortment of bee biologists from around the world, on projects under research in Israel, China, Tenerife, North America and obviously the UK.
Stephen Falk opened up the sessions with a talk on breaking down barriers on bee identification. He is the UK’s top guy in bee identification, and there are 275 species to date!
He recently produced the most comprehensive guide to bee identification in the UK, a guide well worth purchasing if you want to learn more about bee’s!
We are hoping to have Steve here to run bee identification course here this summer, so get in touch if you’re interested!
One fascinating fact I learnt was that mining bees in North America living in desert conditions can remain in their nesting holes for up to 3 years without food or water! Astonishing!
