It was ‘smelly footprints’ that first got bumblebee specialist and bestselling author Dave Goulson interested in bees over 30 years ago.
‘I noticed that if you watch a bee visiting flowers, she often flies towards the flower as if she’s going to land and then, at the last minute, veers off as if there’s something wrong with it,’ the professor of Biology at the University of Sussex tells Sussex Life. ‘I saw this and I thought, “that’s a bit weird.”’ It took him five years to find out why.
‘It turns out, as they approach a flower, they sniff it with their antennae for the smelly footprint of a previous bee, because if they smell that, it tells them that the nectar will have been taken,’ he reveals. ‘I just thought that was quite cool, really.’
The author of A Sting in the Tale: My Adventures with Bumblebees (2014) and The Garden Jungle or Gardening to Save the Planet (2020) has been sharing his enthusiasm for bees and other insects ever since, and has been helping to make Sussex University a centre of excellence for bee research for over a decade.
Sussex is home to about 230 different species of bee and an ideal base to find out more about them. James Power, the author of a new book The Bees of Sussex, describes the ‘richness of the county for bees’ as one of the main motivations for writing the book.
Someone once calculated that if you had a man-sized bumblebee, they would burn the calories of a Mars bar in 30 seconds of flying. They are kind of like the gas-guzzling, six-litre-engine version of the insect world.’
‘We’ve got the most incredible diversity of landscapes,’ he says, referring to the county’s ‘vegetated shingle’, ‘chalk downland’, ‘heaths’, ‘fantastic woodland’ and ‘lovely meadows’. ‘If you mix that all together, plus all the people who are actively gardening for bees, that means that there’s a lot of opportunity for lots of different species to find the niche that suits them.’
‘Bees like heat,’ says James, and Sussex − second only to Kent in terms of bee diversity − is ‘a relatively sunny and warm part of the country’. Our seafront is also significant. ‘Because we’re that bit closer to the continent, we’re in a position where, if a species is going to move across the channel, then we’re one of the counties where it’s going to land first,’ James explains. ‘At the moment, we’re acquiring a new species at the rate of one every two or three years.’
The bee that Sussex residents are most likely to see is the Common Carder Bee, a fluffy specimen that is very adaptable and has a very long flying season, says James. As for rare bees, Sussex is the only place in the country that you’ll see the Downland Furrow Bee. It disappeared for 60 years and then was spotted in Lewes in 2004 and has since been seen between Brighton and Beachy Head.
Some bees are dependent on specific flowers, making them particularly vulnerable. The yellow loosestrife bee, for example, is specially adapted to mop up the protein-rich oils of the non-nectar-producing yellow loosestrife flower; while the sea aster bee, seen near Seaford and Rye, gets its pollen exclusively from the mauve-petalled sea aster.
Some of our bees have extraordinary habits. The red-tailed mason bee, found on the downs, uses empty snail shells as a nest site, depositing balls of pollen and nectar in them, laying an egg on top, and then repeating the process several times within the same shell. It then seals in each egg with a wall of leaves before upturning the shell and concealing it with vegetation. ‘Their brains are the size of a poppy seed and yet they’ve got that capacity to fulfil these complicated tasks,’ marvels James.
James is keen to stress the importance of bees: 75 per cent of human food and 90 per cent of all trees, wild flowers and shrubs are pollinated by bees, he explains. They are also a significant food source for birds and other wildlife. ‘They underpin our environment,’ he says.
Sadly, wild bees (not to be confused with domestic honey bees) are in decline. Between 1813 and 1991, 90 per cent of Sussex’s heathland was repurposed, often to create farming land to boost food supplies. The loss of at least ten species during this time is thought to be connected to this reduction of natural habitat. Urbanisation has also played a role, with the population of Sussex now double what it was a century earlier.
Bees are the intellectual giants of the insect world. They can navigate across huge distances, they memorise the landscape, people have even trained them to roll a ball and drop it down a hole to get a reward, and they can recognise human faces
Climate change in Sussex - more extreme heat, longer periods of drought, and more intense flooding - is reducing and fragmenting bee populations. It is also impacting the quality, quantity and timing of the pollen and nectar production of flowering plants.
Much of Dave Goulson’s research has focused on the effect of pesticides, which, he says, ‘are very toxic to bees’ and are contributing to their decline. As farming has intensified, so has our use of chemicals, he explains. Hedgerows and hay meadows have disappeared to make way for larger fields, which he describes as ‘a fairly hostile place’ for bees. Fertilisers are also an issue, he explains, reducing biodiversity as plant communities become dominated by plants such as nettles and docks which like a lot of fertiliser.
Sussex residents can make a real difference by planting according to James’s tips, engaging with the district council about what’s happening in the local area, and reducing the amount they mow. ‘If you can leave space for dandelions and buttercups in your lawn, then you’re doing the bees a big favour,’ says James, who has counted 77 species of bee in his own garden in Lewes. He recently encouraged the local cemetery to take on a less intensive mowing regime. ‘It has paid dividends,’ he says, with some rare bumblebees now visiting.
It's surprising how quickly bees will find new feeding areas. ‘They are the intellectual giants of the insect world,’ says Dave. ‘They can navigate across huge distances, they memorise the landscape, people have even trained them to roll a ball and drop it down a hole to get a reward, and they can recognise human faces.’
Nevertheless, their feeding needs are significant. ‘You often see them in the spring walking on the ground because they’ve run out of energy,’ explains Dave. ‘Because they’ve got small wings and big heavy bodies, they need to flap their wings really fast,’ he says. ‘Someone once calculated that … if you had a man-sized bumblebee, they would burn the calories of a Mars bar in 30 seconds of flying.’ He adds: ‘They are kind of like the gas-guzzling, six-litre-engine version of the insect world.’
To find out more about how best we can help bees, Sussex University’s Buzz Club runs regular community projects. The Air Bee ‘n’ Bee project has got people making purpose-built bee hotels for solitary bees (as opposed to bee colonies), while Dave’s Big Bee Hotel Experiment, a collaboration with The Wildlife Community which runs until September, has already got around 500 participants from across the country monitoring the activity of solitary bees in the tiny homes they’ve created for them to nest in.
Everyone can help save bees, even if they just have a window box. ‘Even right in the middle of Brighton, it’s amazing how insects will find them, sniff them out and they’ll appear,’ says Dave. ‘Everyone should do their bit, if they can.’
The Bees of Sussex by James Power is published by Pisces Publications.
Dave Goulson’s latest book, Silent Earth: Averting the Insect Apocalypse, is published by Jonathan Cape.
To find out more about how you can help bees in Sussex, visit thebuzzclub.uk.
![The fluffy carder bee.]()
The fluffy carder bee. (Image: Steven Falk)
Eight tips from James for attracting bees to your garden
- Buy plants and seeds with a ‘pollinator-friendly’ label.
- Choose a mixture of flower shapes. Long-tongued bees love tubular blooms such as comfrey and foxglove, while short-tongued species will need flat-faced flowers such as daisies and rudbeckia.
- Introduce plants with different blooming periods so that there is food for bees throughout the year.
- Some bees are ‘fussy eaters’. If you want to attract an ivy bee, for example, you’ll need ivy.
- Minimise mowing. The wild flowers that sprout up amongst grass, such as dandelions and bugle, will soon attract bees.
- Avoid over-pruning trees and shrubs. Bees love nesting in a bit of dead and decaying wood.
- Pesticides will deter bees, so avoid these as far as possible.
- Make a bee hotel where bees can lay their eggs.
Dave’s tips for building an Air Bee ‘n’ Bee
- Use natural, breathable materials such as wood.
- For a simple bee hotel, tie a bundle of bamboo canes securely together or drill holes in a lump of wood.
- To appeal to different species, include a range of hole sizes, between 5 and 10mm in diameter.
- Choose an unshaded location 0.5m – 2m above the ground on a south or south-east-facing wall or fence.
