August 2013

Great to have a real summer for a change.  I write these notes about 2 weeks before they are published, so anything can happen in the mean-time.  Just now, the sun is shining, and it is hot.  The insects are buzzing and butterflies abound.  The main bird breeding season has finished, but there are many birds that are multiple brooded, and so produce young right through the summer; these include Blackbirds, House Sparrows, Pigeons of all five sorts, Swallows and House Martins.

One of the big questions in ecology is how does society work in social insects?  Social insects are those that have a queen, a few males and many worker non-breeding females.  Social insects include Honeybees, Bumblebees, Ants and Termites. There are also many species of semi social Bees and Wasps, and many more solitary species.  These insects may have evolved over several hundred million years.  The queen of a colony of social insects probably has very little control over their day to day behaviour, but the fact that they are all related means that what they do is under genetic control.  This means that they are programmed to behave in a particular way such as collecting food or attacking enemies.  The different casts of insect also live for different periods of time.  Queens may live several years, but workers just a few weeks.  Males do little work, but are redundant after they have mated, and therefore die very young as well.  Workers are always female.  This group of insects (with the exception of Termites) are grouped in the family Hymenoptera (Ants, Bees and Wasps).  Because they have been around for some time, they all perform very useful tasks in ecology.  For example, Bees in particular pollinate flowers so that seeds and fruit can form.  Ants are collectors of dead insects and other waste that is fed to other colony members.  Wasps are decomposers, cutting up waste plant and animal material for food and nest-building.  The vast majority of Wasps and Bees die with the first frosts, but Honeybees and Ants will overwinter in their colonies.  There may be as many as 60,000 honeybees in one colony!  These of course have now become domesticated, and are mostly managed in hives so that their products can be used to keep us Humans healthy.  It has recently been shown that Bee pollen can help to prevent prostate cancer in men.  Honey never goes off and is a rich source of good nutrients.