2 MILLION BLOSSOMS
In Search of Nests I love these garden visitors with their rapid antics. Having nest sites. I had heard that they build their nests in a variety of habitats, including walls and chimney stacks where loose mortar leaves cavities. They’ve also been spotted in the soft rock sidewalls of quarries and cliffs where they can excavate small holes in the sheer faces. Totnes is an ancient town with many old stone walls, whose mortar is now soft and crumbly. Despite looking carefully, I have so far failed to locate any nests in my hometown. Rumor had it that a large nest site existed in Devon near
the city of Exeter. How could I pass up a chance to see them in action? So, on a clear, bright morning in early April, I drove the 25 miles to Alphington, a former village that has been absorbed into Exeter’s urban sprawl. Alphington still has many discernible traces of its past including the beautiful church of St Michael and All Angels, built from local red stone and dating from the 15th century. Along the south western side of the churchyard, bordering Rectory Drive is an old wall mostly constructed from Devon Cob with an irregular, rough, pinkish surface. Cob is an ancient building material, a local Devon speciality made by mixing sub-soil containing clay with sand, straw, and water. In its texture and consistency cob is very similar to adobe. The Alphington cob wall runs about 100 feet in length and
reaches up about 10 feet. Close examination reveals hundreds of small holes about half an inch in diameter. These form the entrance to nest chambers, about 5 inches deep, for the Anthophora plumipes that live here—an impressively large colony. When I arrived at about 10 am, the sun had not yet reached the thick pinkish wall which was still shrouded in shadow. Although it was cooler in the shade, many jet black female Anthophora plumipes were popping back regularly. Often they were loaded with large amounts of pollen packed on their orange pollen brushes, protein picked up from foraging trips in many private gardens nearby. Within this stone-walled nest chamber, each female
constructs a series of cells using moist soil. Each cell is provisioned with pollen and nectar mixed together. The female then lays one fertilised egg onto this pollen ball before sealing. It takes the better part of a day to complete a single before starting another. She’ll keep building and provisioning cells well into June. When the egg hatches, it develops into a larva, gorging on the food stores. The species overwinters as a mature bee and then emerges the following spring, starting the cycle anew. Although the species is solitary, females often nest in large aggregations as seen with the Alphington colony. As I walked along the wall, admiring the inhabitants, I
the cob. But far more were sitting in nest chambers, squatting
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