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heap. You can also buy a box of live bumblebees for the home garden now called a Beepol box. To suggest using Japanese knotweed for bee hotels is very risky and ill advised. Cutting knotweed canes in the summer while they're still growing is likely

queen buff-tailed bumblebee, was examining the compost heap; I guess she was searching out a suitable hibernation site. Every now and then something else would buzz past: rosemary leaf beetles, green shieldbugs and ladybirds were all very active

the missile. If it's a female it will ignore the stone and continue sunning itself. So confrontational are the males that they will also flap up to investigate other butterflies, bumblebees, birds and even passing aeroplanes.

(apart from a friendly pigeon), and I doubt there will be until I have grown sufficient foliage (and bought the all-important plum tree) for them to hide in. And it’s going to be a butterfly and bumblebee haven – full of single-flowered, nectar rich

that actually, everything's alright with the world. I also love watching bumblebees foraging in cranesbill geraniums, viper's bugloss and the mountain cornflower, Centaurea montana.And in the office? The response wasn't as great - or as heated - as when I asked

Spring has sprung. All at once. The guinea pig and his hutch are back outside. Shieldbugs, in their purple-brown winter colours, are sunbathing on the fence. The first bumblebee of the year, a queen buff-tailed, floated past and a male feather

few days, the fox has been back each morning to sniff around the patio, today we've had wood pigeon, jay, greater-spotted woodpeckers and more squirrels than I can shake a broom at. A few days ago there was still a bumblebee flying (not sure what

bumblebee had been found at a London sewage works. It’s all very lovely, but I can’t help feeling that the setting of such events should be a little more romantic. The goldcrest was one of several moving through the shrubbery one Thursday rush-hour morning

few are forming pods. Any idea? Is it lack of bees for pollentation? with reference to James Atkins, I have the same problem and it is caused by bumblebees drilling into the back of the flower robbing the nectar rather than going into the front. Has

to Novice JoanUnlike wasps and honeybees, bumblebees are very docile nesters. For one thing there are far fewer of them in the small untidy nest, probably only a couple of hundred at the height of the season, where wasps may have 10 – 12,000 and honeybees up