French wildlife and beekeeping

Had another house visitor flying around the room yesterday, a Mottled Shieldbug, Rhaphigaster nebulosa . (La punaise nébuleuse in French). This little “stink bug” mainly feeds on broadleaved trees, shrubs and plants. It  also usually spends the winter outside deep in thick ivy or perhaps a fissure in a tree or wall.  As is the case with some other Shield bugs, (True bugs), they can be a bit smelly if threatened when they can release a strong-smelling secretion. Young bugs have stink glands on their back; in the case of adults, these are to be found on the underside of the thorax. Their flight is both clumsy and noisy which upsets some people that don’t realise what they are or that they are harmless - unless you count the smell. Then again if people didn’t insist on squishing them the smell could be avoided. It’s not such a frequent winter house visitor as the usual Green Shield Bug Palomena prasinathe, (Photos below) , which can often be found in large...

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...