Hello, my name's Lindsay Turnbull and I'm an associate professor in the Department of Plant Sciences
at the University of Oxford, and we're right in the middle of this very serious corona virus crisis right
now. And my students are all stuck at home and we want to keep them in touch with biology
and keep in touch with us. And so we're going to make a new series of videos and they're going to be called back garden
biology.
Hello, welcome to this week's episode of that garden biology. But down the far end of the garden
today, starting anyway and in the patch of cowslips, that's how I showed you in the very first
episode. But we're not looking at the plants themselves this time. We're looking at something that's been going on
in the law, frankly, has been some funny events going on in the slow, not been trying to unravel
what's been happening. I have to take my garden, as most gardeners do. I
try to take my garden as a little as possible because I have heavy clay soil, which
in the winter is impossible to take because it's completely waterlogged is like digging into a big bowl of solid clay,
which you just can't do. A man, as soon as it starts to get hot and dry, it turns into concrete.
So digging is extremely hard work. So I'm always admiring of any animals that
can dig with ease in this soil. And that's what I've found out here. So
these cowslips were grown by my mother. She sewed some seeds last autumn
and she gave me this tray of young plants and I created some spaces for them, pushed aside
the grass and plop popped in these little plugs of soil, little realising that was making
it a little bit easier for some animals that like to dig to find their way. And I want to show you
what one of them's been doing. Just going to lift aside this cancelable leaf. My cameraman
is going to come in and show you this little hole and you can see there's the soil
mound at around the side and a sizeable hole in the middle.
Now, there's a few of those around this law, the Open appearing over the last couple of weeks, I could find at least
five or six of them perhaps, and you may have even more in your law. And if you look carefully
so and I just saw its inhabitants leave as we literally
spoke. But I've been flirting out, staking out these halls, trying to find
out who's in there. And that's what we're going to be talking about this week. Every good stakeout
starts with a location. And this is ours. A little hole in the lawn. You can see the pile of soil
around it. And who exactly has made it? Well, our first guest was this little
Dave sunning itself on a leaf at the back of the garden. And thanks to my colleagues, Tony, Alanda,
Liam Crowley, we think that this is a Hawthorne mining bee. And you see on the back
of her legs there, that's almost has to collect pollen to provision her. Yeah.
So we staked out the lawn to see if we could see her in action. And sure enough, coming out of
there, Law Man does appear to be a hopeful mining bee. But we can't really
be confident about that because this isn't a terribly good shot. And so she flies away,
leaving us a little bit, none the wiser. A few minutes later, this appeared. Now
face looks like a wasp. She then landed and we were able to get better
shots of her right by the hole under the cowslips. And she is not a wasp. She
is actually a type of bee. And she is called a nomad bee. And we think that this
particular species is Gooden's nomad bee. She's mimicking a wasp for her
own protection. And what she's going to do is go into the hole made by the mining bee
and she's going to lay her eggs in there. And when her larvae emerge, they're going to eat the food supply.
And indeed, the larvae of the mining bee. So these things generally are sometimes called brood
parasites or cuckoo bees. This is the unfortunate victim. So
this is the grey patched mining bee, Andrina Nitta down. We have a really nice clear shot
of her here. You can see the little grey patches. So we're quite confident about the species here. And
we know that Gooden's name, Abbie, does indeed parasitise Andrina and it's at her
say we're quite confident about both of these ideas. And as if she didn't have enough to worry
about here, the bee flies again. This is a mating pair, which I managed to catch on film.
The female bee fly also patrols the lawn over the mining business, and she flicks
her eggs into the mines. And her larvae will also imagine the food and the larvae
of the bees. So it really is a baby world out there. So we have a lots of fun
staking out the bees about we're making those holes in the law and finding out who was who, who the original
occupant was, and then learning that that second WASP bee, it was actually
a parasite taking advantage of the original occupant. If you want to try to
identify insects, it is daunting because they're such a big, diverse group. But I really
recommend this book. It's called A Comprehensive Guide to Insects of Britain and
Ireland. It's by a guy called Paul D. Brock. I don't know him. I don't think he's anything to do with Oxford.
It's not an Oxford University Press book, but it is a brilliant book and it has revolutionised
my ability to identify insects. I was never very good at it. But with this book, I just feel a lot more confident
if we just open it out in a random place. You'll see every page is covered with these
fantastic full colour pictures. He must have taken years to getting all these pictures
together. There's a bit of a description of the species and a little map showing you where
it occurs in Britain. And that's really important if you're convinced you've seen something
that you live in Oxfordshire and that is only occurs in the far north of Scotland and it's probably not what
you've seen. There's also lots of good stuff online, of course, but this is a really great start.
Okay, so we had a look at mining these earlier. They are solitary
bees, generally speaking, solitary anyway, that make those holes in the lawn, dig out these brood
chambers. But there are other solitary bees that make their nests in other places. And you might be even more
familiar with those because perhaps in your garden you've got one of these.
This is a bee hotel. You can make them yourself or you can buy them. Or in this
case, I was actually given this Bee Hotel and you can see there are pipes, bits
of bamboo with hollow centres and Bouzar to attract a different type of solitary bee generally
called mason bees. So Mason bees make their whole make their nests in soft
mortar. So if you have an old war, you might see them nesting in there. You certainly have them in the college.
You can also get leafcutter bees using those homes. Those are bees that cut
little semicircles out of the edges of leaves. Roses are one of their favourites. At least one of the common species
likes to do that. So don't be alarmed. If you see that happening, they're not going to really damage your plant.
And they plug they use those leaves to plug the entrance to. The individual brute cells and to
seal off the chamber at the very end to stop other bees from entering because we see
how they do get parasitised others, the Mason bees tend to use mud to block
the chamber. And that's one way that you can help to identify what you've got. What materials are they using
to plug up the holes? Too early for that and might be hurt. Although someone's
visiting and showing an interest. But take a look at my mum and dad's BHL.
This is attached to their back wall where they've always had mason bees. And you can see
that it is an all out frenzy there with bees battling to get into the tubes. And indeed,
my dad said they barely seem to do anything other than fight one another. So I'm not sure what species
that is, but I don't think I've ever seen a bee her tail with quite so many days. So pretty impressive
data, I have to say. So it will end where we began back in this patch where I know the mining bees
are busy. And it's amazing to think that there are hundreds of bee species in Britain,
around 250 different bee species in Britain. The vast majority of those most
of us probably never realise wherever seeing they're small. Much smaller than
than honeybees or bumblebees. So they kind of go under the radar, but they're actually really important
pollinators. So, for example, at this time of year where, as we've seen, the bumblebees are not very active
yet, it's only the queens out and about a lot of the pollination that's going on now is being carried out
by those solitary bees. They go on all through the year. There are species that come out early,
species that come out later, and they are important. And if you can grow flowers that attract
those kinds of bees and put up a bee hotel and just leave them alone in your lawn. When I was looking up
some of the stuff online, I could see there were also, you know, people Googling, how do I get rid of
these and my lawn? Well, can I suggest you don't need to get rid of them? It's true that those solitary
bees can sting, but very, very rarely. And if you were unlucky enough to be stung by one,
it's nothing like as painful as a honey bee sting or a wasp sting. So it's a very,
very mild sting. Obviously, if you're allergic to bee stings, then you have to be even more careful. But for most
of us, if you're not, then really these things don't pose any threat to you at all. So I hope
you can have a wander around your garden and find some bees making homes in unexpected
places.