I apologise for my gloomy assessment but with the July birdsong starting to diminish my thoughts have returned to the plight of our insects.
Last winter and spring was a disastrous time for many bee-keepers. A local apiary in Awliscombe lost half of its bees – 50 hives. Here in Payhembury the Mousehole apiary lost several and we lost two of our three hives. It was not disease or lack of food that caused such huge deaths but all that relentless rain. It is thought that the bees simply could not cope with the humidity. Our remaining hive has been slow to build up but we are hopeful we may get a small honey harvest later on.
Our butterflies and dragonflies have also suffered badly but it is moths which have suffered the worst and cause me the most concern. May 2023 was a bad month and the first time I realised that things were not going right. Then the same happened in May this year only this time the decline has continued right through June and now into July. There has been a clear and shocking downward spiral emerging.
My total count for June was down 83% compared to 2023 and has been down 69% for the first week of July. You may well ask exactly what numbers are we talking about. Well in June the total count fell from almost 5000 moths in 2023 to only about 800. That really is a staggering decline!
For a location particularly rich I bats and birds this does not bode well and there may be serious consequences for the food chain next spring. Admittedly insects do have a remarkable way of bouncing back from such set-backs but it remains to be seen how resilient they are in the face of these problems.
Another less obvious problem to emerge is the number of different species recorded was down 31% and many of those missing were single-brooded species. This raises the distinct possibility of local extinctions, so let us all hope that we do not lose any permanently.
