French wildlife and beekeeping

Usually I don't need to feed any of my bees before winter but due to the bad weather this year, especially the first 6 months, everything was behind with some colonies swarming as late as July with a corresponding slow build up in colony population strength. As things worked out it wasn't too bad by the end of August although the honey yield was poor, probably only about a third of what it should have been. Most hives were already well loaded and heavy with honey for the winter leaving all of September remaining to forage the ivy which was abundant this year. Ivy, a much maligned plant, is a great source of nectar and pollen for the bees at the end of the season and plays an important role for a number of species. However I had half a dozen underweight colonies from late reared Queens and I've been feeding these to boost their population size and hopefully get them up to weight with sufficient honey stores to get them through winter but I'm still left with th...

This week it's  the 29th International Ornithological Film Festival at Ménigoute, Deux-Sevres, Poitou-Charentes and I'm really looking forward to spending some time there on Thursday. Festival runs from 29th October until 30th November and I s hould say right from the start it's a lot more than films and  however good the films may be  it's the other things that interest me, especially spending a bit of time looking, (drooling), at all the optical kit, cameras, field glasses and scopes I can't afford. Not that I can't get by with what I've got but it's like everything else, it would always be nice to have better things and there really are some incredible optics available these days.  Hmmm, best stop dreaming. I must mention before anything else that the first thing to grab my attention was this stunning old bee "hive" apparently about 150 years of age. I just love this type of thing however  impractical it may have been compared to...

One of the more spectacular bird migrations in France if you happen to live on the flight paths is that of the Grues cendrées or Common Cranes as we call them in English.   The Spring and Autumn migrations are completely different affairs but for several weeks now Cranes have been moving in ever increasing numbers in or through France as part of their Autumn movements  BUT this is not a simple migration from A to B but more a gradual, partial, staggered affair with birds wintering at various locations stretching from north-eastern France ( Lorraine and especially Champagne ) to Morocco with various locations in between. The majority will end up in Spain with most of them in the large wintering areas of Extremadura.  Weather conditions will determine the timing of these movements which can last until December; the only issue is accessibility to food on the ground which is principally the residues in maize fields that have been left untouched following harvest. ...

Just when I thought things would go quiet on the "bee and wasp" front I received a phone call first thing this morning from a lady with an Asian Hornet nest in a cavity in a stone barn wall. Due to the awful weather in most of France for the first 6 months of 2013 all "wasp" family species have had a bad year with a reduced number of successful colonies and a late start for those that finally got going. This one had grown rapidly in the last 5 or 6 weeks, outgrown whatever space they had inside the wall leading to a requirement to expand the nest outside of the wall. Still very active, continuing to grow and at head height from the ground the nest was becoming a danger to the householder, her dogs and horses. Of course this is also one of those cases with an introduced species where destruction is a necessity especially if there is a likelihood of next years Queens being killed and reducing the number of colonies next year. Always sad to have to destr...

Now the time has come "to get started", but where to begin?  Best to start by explaining a little about where we live, our attitude to wildlife biodiversity and the environment in both the wider world and our own little piece of the planet we own and manage. For me achieving maximum species diversity is paramount within the constraints of what would be present or perhaps historically was present in a given region providing those previous conditions can still be met. Evidently it isn't possible to put back heath-land where a city has been built and there are many localities where that type of situation exists which we can only make the best of. Fortunately that wasn't a situation we inherited some 18 years ago in 1995 when we purchased our cottages and land here in the west of France, even though a large part of our three hectares had been intensively cultivated with sunflowers, wheat, barley and oil seed rape for many years, all regularly dosed with "cides...