Lucas Innes lives on a farm near Thurso, in Caithness, and he’s got involved in Species on the Edge this year. Here’s his story:
In April of this year, we had some work going on around the farm, and ended up with an area of bare ground. Ever the optimists, we just chucked some random wildflower seeds onto it and hoped for the best.
It was obviously the right decision! By June we had a nice little area filled with flowers of borage, poppies, crimson clover, but predominantly Purple tansy (Phacelia tanacetifolia).
This was lovely on it’s own, and we were happy with the number of bees, hoverflies, and moths it was pulling in, however we were totally taken off guard by the sudden appearance of Great yellow bumblebees. They’ve been spotted in the area before, but in the 10 or so years I’ve been looking, I had never seen one.
After a few days spent sitting and watching these beautiful big bees, it was even better to find out that they were coming back consistently, one or two every half hour or so, in among the common carders, moss carders, buff tails, white tails, and the occasional garden bumblebee. Worker bees were then joined by some queens and males later on in the year – there must have been a Great yellow bumblebee colony somewhere nearby.
The Great yellow bumblebees were particularly fond of the purple tansy!
Unfortunately our wildflowers got quite a battering with the wind in early August and our little patch has prematurely met its end, but it just goes to show what even a little can do. We will definitely be doing the same in a bigger area next year.
Well done Lucas! Thanks for sending in your story and wonderful pictures. Hopefully this will encourage other people to have a go at planting wildflower seeds and see what happens..
You can find out more about the Great Yellow Bumblebee here
