NATURE COLUMN: Neil Collingwood

AS many people are still locked down to escape the dreaded coronavirus, there are worse things to do with your time than to go into your garden and appreciate some of the insects that you will find there.

Now many people claim not to be keen on insects but there are very few who would be happy if insects were to disappear altogether from their gardens. We all know for example how vital bees are for pollinating our fruit trees, but do we know how many kinds of bees there are, and how they differ?

We can easily recognise the difference between a bumblebee and a honey bee but how many people know that there are actually 25 different species of bumble bee in the UK and that they are all in decline because of loss of habitat? Honey bees are different in that they are cultivated and cared for by beekeepers but they too suffer from the loss of food plants and also from problems like the aptly named Varroa Destructor mite that attacks bees and their larvae and also passes on viruses that may cause the death of an entire hive.

Then there are wasps of course. Most people don’t like wasps, by which they usually mean the large black and yellow insects that they see around their beer-glasses outside the pub.

But again, they aren’t all the same, there are several species of large wasps that can sting including the common wasp and the german wasp and they are quite easy to tell apart if you study them.

But putting these aside, how many species of wasp are there in the UK altogether? Believe it or not there are 9,000 different species and some of them are stunningly beautiful, for example the Ruby-tailed Wasp. This small wasp has a head and thorax (the front section of the body to which the wings and legs are attached) which appear to have been formed from handbeaten bright green metal. Its abdomen (the rearmost section of the body) appears to have been similarly beaten from bright red metal.

As the insect moves and the light plays over it, various other colours will appear and disappear on both sections of the body; purples, pinks and blues.

They are truly lovely insects and can often be seen on walls and window-frames in the sun.

Of course we can’t talk about wasps without also mentioning hornets and people frequently tell me about the hornet nests that they have in the sheds or attics of their suburban homes.

It usually turns out that these people have probably never seen a hornet in their life. The first question I ask is ‘what colour are they?’ And if the answer is ‘black and yellow’ then no further questions are required.

Hornets aren’t black and yellow, in fact the predominant colour is a reddish-brown and even the yellow is nowhere near as bright as the yellow of a wasp. Hornets are usually only encountered in oak woodland where they build their nests in holes in living or dead oaks, not in suburban garden sheds.

And finally on this whistle-stop tour are the beetles which we really don’t want to be without.

There are 46 species of ladybirds in the UK although only 26 look like ‘typical’ ladybirds.

They are vital in our gardens because both larvae and adults predominantly eat aphids and that can’t be a bad thing in a garden. Other beetle species also tend to eat plant-pests rather than plants, larger species will eat slugs and snails and many will also eat aphids like the ladybirds do.

A new acquisition for me is the common green shield-bug. I have not seen these in my garden until this year and now they have graced me with their young (see photo). They start off as small round predominantly black beetles before growing and turning increasingly green.

Remember just because something has six legs and wouldn’t appeal to you as a husband or wife, don’t spray it or stamp on it, it may be being really useful in your garden.