This Forum will close on Wednesday 27 March, 2024. Please refer to the announcement on the Discussions page for further detail.
Bird box where bees had been all summer....
hi
we'd been advised to clear out our bird box having been lucky enough to have bees in it all summer. The bees have long since left (we thought).
When we opened it up it was full of garden debris and also some long cream tubes, which had what looked like a bright yellow / cream coloured maggot wriggling out of one. There is a whole cluster of these tubes and they have burrowed into the wood of the box. We also thought that we saw some movement in the debris, maybe a bee, so we have put it back together and put it back in the garden.
Might bees be hibernating in there? Also, does anyone know what the maggot like things are? Much larger than a maggot in size. We took some photos very quickly....
Burrowed into the wood....
0
Posts
Woodworm?
Fascinating - those are the cocoons of Bee Moth larvae - they live in symbiosis with bumble bee and wasp species - sometimes they will cause the bees to abandon the nest but usually they just feed on the nest debris
http://www.uksafari.com/beemoths.htm
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
Thanks Dove! How interesting!
I'd heard about them years ago on a radio programme - somehow I dredged it up - no idea how
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
If you put Bee Moth larvae into Google there's a fascinating PDF article published by the Natural History Museum - I can't seem to upload it here
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
fascinating, maybe I should open ours. But I probably wouldn't get them back together
In the sticks near Peterborough