PUBLISHED: 00:04,
26 March 2019 | UPDATED: 00:04, 26 March 2019
One of
the UK’s rarest bumblebees is being given a boost – by putting the flowers it
feeds on in cages.
Conservationists
and volunteers have planted 1,000 bilberry plants inside specially-designed
metal cages that will protect them from grazing so they can provide food for
the bilberry bumblebee in its Peak District stronghold.
The
bilberries, which flower in the spring and early summer before heather and
other moorland plants, are a vital food source for the bilberry bumblebee and
its larvae.
But
tender young bilberry plants are also a favourite of grazing animals such as
deer and sheep, stunting the bushes’ growth and leading to a lack of mature
plants that the threatened bee favours.
So
bilberry has been planted across 60 acres of Hathersage Moor near Sheffield and
protected by cages by the Bumblebee Conservation Trust and the Eastern Moors
Partnership between the RSPB and National Trust.
In the
past, grazing pressure on the moor has led to a lack of mature bilberry bushes,
and the new project will build on changes in how the land is managed – which
has already seen bilberry begin to make a comeback.
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