Mole’s Bumblebee trail #3 – Bombus Hortorum Traditional Cache
Mole’s Bumblebee trail #3 – Bombus Hortorum
Please note Use of geocaching.com services is subject to the terms and conditions
in our disclaimer.
3rd in a trail looking for Bumblebees
Bombus hortorum is rather similar in colouring to B. terrestris and B. lucorum workers. The main, and easiest to spot, difference is that B. hortorum has two bands of yellow hairs on its thorax. This can be seen on the bee on the left. B. hortorum has the longest tongue of any bumblebee in the UK, it is usually around 1.5 cm long, but some bees can stretch to over 2 cm. This means that it can forage on flowers that have deep corollas that would keep out other bees. You will hardly ever see it on open or daisy type flowers unless it is gathering pollen.
3/5 - This trail has been set in an area where a BBCT (Bumblebee conservation trust) BeeWalk has been laid – this walk is set as part of a survey to collect bumblebee abundance data. There are walks all over the UK which have been set by BBCT volunteers. The idea of this survey is to set up a fixed-route walk and take monthly recordings – the fixed route is essential in order to get good comparisons.
I have set up this walk for the BBCT and in turn have created this cache trail with 5 caches along the way – there is another cache on the route, being one of the ‘Kent FTF caches’
So between the months of June and October I will be collecting my data – why don’t you have a go at seeing if you can identify different species of bumblebee as you go round – I will identify good spots to look as some will be more abundant with bumblebees than others. If you want to go to a site to help with identification try www.bumblebeeconservation.org.uk/bumblebees_id.
Now onto the route – this is a 3km walk with parking for a few cars at the start – fishermen do park here too so you may find this full – but there should be other parking nearby – follow the cache trail in order and you will come back to the car park. A couple spotted before I reached this cache - but not many between here and #4 - can you do better ?
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Svyz cbg fvmr, grgurerq oruvaq nobhg 6sg hc
Treasures
You'll collect a digital Treasure from one of these collections when you find and log this geocache:
Loading Treasures