Ooh maybe some hollow stems bundled together would work for them?
Oooh we have those too - they tend to be called Plasterer Bees here :) They turn up in the garden from time to time but only to forage!
Oooooh amazing! Are they the type to nest in bee houses? 😁
A small bee with a distinctive white moustache looks out of a hole in a bee hotel
The poor Red Mason bees that hatched in the hot spell last week have had the air of 'WTF is THIS weather?!' ever since #bees
Better drowned than duffers, if not duffers won’t drown.
Went for a wander round one of my favourite nature reserves, Brockholes, yesterday. It's such an awesome place, life's been getting in the way of me getting there lately but I must go more often!
Lucky - hopefully that will be them established this year then :) I'm looking forward to them reaching us! Looks like there's one isolated record in Cheshire, which is the nearest to me so far!
The pollen on her face 🤣 Is she bicornis or cornuta?
A small bee with a white moustache is peeping out of a hole in a bee hotel
It's that time of year again! 😁 #bees
Sounds like a project 😁 Thank you B!
Thank you so much, they are so easy to care for 🥰🐝
That's not a bad idea! If only I'd saved the soil from digging the pond rather than spreading it out 😭
I will give that a go Brigit and see what happens! Was wondering if scraping the grass off a patch of the lawn would help too - we have a lot of clover in our lawn so there isn't much bare ground to be seen?
Not proper clay, though we border an area that's on proper clay, so maybe sand will do the trick!
It's not even clay really, it's just very, very damp (mother in law lives half a mile away and is on proper clay)! Glad they don't mind moisture though, it gives me hope!
Our garden is full of mining bees who come in to forage, and even inspect our lawn for likely nesting spots, before rejecting it in disgust 😭 Does anyone have any tips as to how to make my lawn a more appealing nesting environment? It's currently pretty boggy which I think is the problem... #bees
Isn't he just! Hopefully will get to photograph some of them soon :)
I watched this at the weekend! It's absolutely fantastic!
So the replacement was SUPPOSED to be a relaxed over Winter project for us, in reality has been constructed mainly by Ant in every spare moment over the past few weeks when we realized we were badly running out of time! It was completed yesterday, just in the nick of time (pic 2)
The old planter/trellis combination that was holding two of the bee houses was showing its age, it comprised two INCREDIBLY overpriced planters, with trellis we fixed to the back (ironically the budget trellis was bombproof, even as the expensive planters rotted away around it 🤣)!
Happy Solstice!
WOAH!!!
Wow, the whole process is fascinating! I thought fungi were interesting but slime moulds are something else!
...I would love to find some of the Didymiums though. They look so cool!
That's good to know! Previously this is as close as I've got to them, so the fuzziness wasn't as obvious. And I'd love to know how they disperse spores as they just look like pom poms on a stick, no visible pores/gills etc!
I'll be making a pilgrimage each year to see these ones 🤣 I've never found them locally to me but these are a just about decent amount of travel time away so I'm looking forward to visiting them next year!
Also, the hunt for slime moulds in that garden continues 🤣
A welcome correction from @regularslimeguy.bsky.social - these are actually tiny mushrooms!
Are they? Thank you, I didn't realize! That would explain why I can't find out what they are when I look at slime moulds 🤣
Every year these tiny myxomycetes (slime moulds) pop up on fallen leaves in our garden, have been trying to get a decent photo for a few years now. This one's a start! Second photo is actual size!
The incredible Barbrook II visited in November, a stone circle partly enclosed by a drystone wall. This area is well worth a visit, with 3 stone circles and a cairn field in the near vicinity.