Author: More than a Dodo

Poo, pooters and pitfall traps

On a sunny Wednesday morning, the entomologists in the Life Collections and the Museum Director, Professor Paul Smith, left the safety of the Museum and headed out into the great outdoors. The aim of the day was to study the huge variety of insect life that’s found in the area, and to do a bit of team bonding along the way.

This new territory was a beautiful farm in Ashbury, in the Vale of the White Horse, which belongs to our friend and fellow insect lover, Sally-Ann Spence. If you’ve ever taken part in live bug handling at the Museum, you may know Sally-Ann as the energetic face behind Minibeast Mayhem.

The day had been carefully planned out and consisted of putting up insect traps in the morning, leaving the afternoon free to play… in poo!

Head of Life Darren Mann taught us all how to put up a flight interception trap (FIT), a malaise trap and a dung-baited pitfall trap. Darren beautifully summed-up the purpose of the different traps, “The first two catch insects that are flying, and the dung trap catches ones that are attracted to poo.” We used sheep poo, in case you were wondering.

After washing our hands and enjoying a lovely lunch, it was time to head back out to a different part of the farm. More poo was involved. We spent a reasonable amount of time (way too long for some of you) playing in horse and cow poo looking for dung beetles – Darren’s favourites.

Then came a short but heavy downpour of rain, followed by a chance to beat trees to coax out more insects, use pooters and swish nets around in a fancy manner. Darren talked us all through it, but essentially it was a ‘hit and hope’ method that resulted in plenty of us getting stung by nettles – all part of the great outdoors experience.

Pooters, in case you are wondering, are a vital piece of kit used to suck insects into a tube (pictured above on the clipboard) via plastic tubing – don’t worry there’s no chance of sucking one up by mistake as a little snack!

Once everyone had collected their insects, we headed back to the farm house to have a go at pond dipping, where we saw tadpoles, dragonfly larvae and water bugs. Sally-Ann had prepared a delicious supper and we all went home happy and full.

Amo Spooner and Molly Carter, Life Collections

Havoc in the hive

One of the most popular spots in the Museum is the live beehive tucked away upstairs. Even when the Museum seems quiet, you’ll find plenty of visitors huddled around the glass, watching the honey bees coming, going, dancing and buzzing. But if you head up to the hive today, you will notice that there’s a lot less buzzing than usual… some of the bees have abandoned us!

Last week I was sitting at my desk in the education office when Zoë Simmons from our Life Collections popped her head round the door and calmly announced, “The bees are swarming”. I must admit that I had a brief vision of angry bees chasing visitors through the Museum, or swirling cartoon-like across the lawn! But the swarm was actually a large throbbing bundle of fairly calm honey bees clustered on one of the plants outside. But why did hundreds of bees suddenly decide to leave their cosy hive and break out into the unknown?

Zoë, who’s been involved in caring for the beehive for several years explains what happened:

After a difficult beginning to the year, the observation beehive was left without a queen bee in residence. This may sound disastrous, but bees are both resourceful and well organised, and the worker bees left in the hive immediately started to feed up a number of the youngest larvae on royal jelly, to create themselves a new queen. There are three large queen cells to be spotted in the hive at the moment and we believe that one of the young queens must have emerged on the morning of the swarm. The first thing she would have done is assess the hive; it appears that it wasn’t to her majesty’s liking, as the next thing she then did was leave, taking about half of the workers bees (mostly the older ones) with her.

The area around the swarm was fenced off, but it attracted a lot of attention as people passed by on their way in and out of the Museum. Zoë Simmons and the Life collections team decided the swarm needed a new home:

Staff at the Museum were able to get in touch with a local bee-keeper, who rushed to the Museum to collect the swarm up. The bees have now been gathered up and taken to live in a custom built hive somewhere on the edge of Port Meadow, where we hope that they will thrive and bee happy.

Rachel Parle, Interpretation and Education Officer

A fly-ing visit

The Museum lawn has been buzzing for the last few days. Mostly it’s families enjoying a picnic in the warm sunshine before coming into the Museum for our Easter holiday activities, but there have also been a few insects adding to the hum. Darren Mann, Head of Life Collections explains;

In autumn and spring you may notice large swarms of flies on walls, fenceposts and especially on cars. Most often these aggregations are of the autumn house fly (Musca autumnalis), a beautiful fly which sadly can also be a pest.

The fly occurs across the temperate latitudes of Europe, northern Africa, and central Asia, but was introduced to North America perhaps through military transport or domestic commerce, in the 1940s.

 

Although Darren says they are one of his favourite flies, he does admit that the autumn house fly has some rather unappealing habits;

They overwinter as unmated adults and emerge in spring, often clustering in large swarms to sun themselves. The breeding seasons begins in spring and after mating females disperse into the surrounding environment to find suitable dung in which to lay their eggs. The yellow maggots (larvae) live exclusively in the dung of cattle, and help the process of nutrient recycling.

Unlike many flies, there is strong sexual dimorphism; the males are marked with orange on their abdomen, while the females tend to be all grey.

While you’re soaking up the warmth and feeling energised for the summer ahead, remember that these little flies will be doing the same!

Rachel Parle, Interpretation and Education Officer