Tag Archives: Buff-tailed Bumblebee

Art, Natural History

Tara louise hughes’s marvellous insect faces

The Gunnersbury Triangle nature reserve this autumn has a new and wonderful nature trail: a series of insects’ faces by Tara Louise Hughes. Tara, when not studying art and illustration, has proven herself a capable conservation volunteer. Now, she has brightened up the reserve for children and adults with her painstakingly fire-etched close-up drawings of insects.

Her damselfly head is a study in miniature detail: the hundreds of pin-point eye-elements (ommatidia) in the insect’s large, forward-facing eyes; the precise distribution and length of the bristles on the top of the head and on the mouthparts; the accurately-observed antennae.

The Stag Beetle head is suitably fearsome, a study in armoured magnificence with interlocking chitin cases for head and thorax, and those extraordinary antler-like mandibles.

The Monarch Butterfly’s head couldn’t be more different: a study of a delicately furry head, a shy eye, and the tenderly coiled proboscis peeping out on the right.

With the Flesh Fly we’re certainly back in scary territory, the rows of stiffly corseted bristles announcing that this insect is ready for action.

The Buff-tailed Bumblebee, a mild and welcome presence in the reserve, and in gardens wherever there is a suitable supply of flowers. The furry insect seems shy under the artist’s gaze.

If not evil, the Red Wood Ant is definitely fierce and single-minded, as anyone who’s ever been bitten by one can testify. Tara’s fire-etching has brilliantly captured that take-no-prisoners energy with the insect’s smooth bullet head, businesslike antennae, and efficiently-hinged jaws. Take a careful look at those scorched textures at the top of its head.

Tara’s Tortoise Beetle shows the distinctly tortoise-like carapace from the underside, its knobbly texture skilfully burnt into the wood, the little head jutting out under the curved rim with the antennae cautiously feeling the outside world for possible danger.

Tara’s website is at https://taralouisehughes.medium.com/

Natural History

Buff-Tailed Bumble-Bee Ambles About Aimlessly

Queen Buff-Tailed Bumblebee
Queen Buff-Tailed Bumblebee

Yes, the Queen Bee is back, or rather, she’s probably been bumbling about the garden all along. She is as you can see certainly buff-tailed, unlike any workers of her species who, confusingly, have white tails. She constantly clambers about the grass, climbs up obstacles and then climbs down out of them, rather slowly. If something comes close she does not buzz, but raises a leg in warning, and carries on doing … whatever it is she is doing. I tried showing her a convenient hole for her nest under a stone slab: she was not at all interested. Wondering if she was low on energy, I offered a drop of watered-down honey: nothing doing there either. Since she must have been around since last autumn, she may well have enough energy to get through several days of searching, though not taking food when available does seem surprising. I left her still stumbling slowly around, within a couple of yards of where she was yesterday.

The compost heap, the pile of logs I left for stag beetles, and the garden shed with the undisturbed space underneath it are all nearby, so there would seem to be excellent freehold properties immediately available, no chain, immediate inspection recommended. But then, each bumblebee species has its own Lilliputian requirements, which are hard to guess from my Brobdingnagian proportions.

Or again, maybe she’s just low on energy.