| Christine | Farmer |

As I wrote in my earlier post on the hedgehog, he has settled into his new home right outside my back door. While there were a few nights last week when I didn’t see the little fellow and thought he may have gone for his big winter sleep, he has been up and about as much as usual this past weekend. He’s still eating well, and taking new leaves and hay into his home after he has a meal, water, and a bit of a scratch. He takes in the leaves and hay with his mouth and it is fascinating to see him so determined to make his nest so comfortable. Here are a couple of new pictures taken this week:

This is the time of year when all over the country hedgehogs are looking for a cosy pile of wood and leaves in which to rest and hibernate. This unfortunately coincides with Bonfire Night and general garden fires, meaning that there is a great danger every year that hedgehogs are killed and injured in bonfires. But you can take steps to prevent this! If you are building a bonfire in your garden, please remember to stack material in a separate place beforehand, and only build the bonfire on the night you intend to light it. This way any animals who are sheltering in the dry material can escape elsewhere.

If you have time, you could also contact places you know who are organising fires and ask them to take care to preserve these wonderful little creatures. Here’s one example of some of the campaigns to help hedgehogs on bonfire night, which can be replicated at your local bonfire: Guards hired to protect hedgehogs and video here.

If you are interested in creating a hedgehog home in your garden, it’s still not too late, and you will find information on how to do this at the British Hedgehog Preservation Society, and on other websites such as this one I discovered yesterday: Ron’s Hedgehogs, with details here on creating a hedgehog house.

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Last summer (2008) I was very surprised to see a young hedgehog quite happily bumbling around my garden in broad daylight. I was so surprised the first time it happened I didn’t even have time to reach for my camera, but the second time I managed to take a video of him eating some cat food, which I’ll try to post very soon! I saw him once or twice over that summer, and this prompted the purchase of a hedgehog house from the local garden centre (click on pics for larger image):

The instructions said to place some leaves inside the house, but to put plenty of leaves outside, as hedgehogs like to take them inside and arrange things for themselves! The wood didn’t appear to offer much protection against the rain, and so after positioning it, I added some roof slates and bricks. As far as I know the hedgehog spent last winter in this house, but as the branches grew down and it became quite inaccessible to me, I could only judge by the beaten-down appearance of the ground in front of the house, glimpsed by the light of a torch.

Over this past summer I caught sight of the hedgehog a few times; once memorably at dawn when I was again startled by the little fellow rushing out of the gloom and straight towards me. In recent weeks, as the nights have started to draw in, I have again seen him more often, and bought some hedgehog food which he seemed to eat once or twice. But then I started to see him now and then eating the dried cat food that I had left for Tigs, and it became a habit for me to leave him out a little bowl of food near the back door. As a result, he began to make nightly visits and I was able to take these pictures through the cat-flap:

He doesn’t seem to mind the flash, but I try not to take too many in case he gets upset.

Just about a week ago now I noticed that whatever time I was up and about in the middle of the night he would either be eating, or napping in a pile of leaves under the fence not far from the back door. I couldn’t believe my eyes at first, but yes, there he was all snuggled up and having a bit of a rest before coming back for a bit of a wander round the bowls of food and water, and the occasional scratch. In fact it became almost guaranteed that I would see him up to something any time I looked out of the window. He now enjoys a slightly more varied diet of dried hedgehog food, dried cat food, peanuts, sunflower seeds (which he’s not keen on) and his favourite: raisins.

One night last week I sneaked outside while he was napping and managed to get this shot of him, in which you can see him amongst the leaves, with the little shelter of slate I had put up in case he got dripped on:

This past weekend I decided to put up a proper little house for him there, as he seemed to love the spot, and so I bought a slightly different model of house which is igloo-shaped, and of a kind of brushwood on a frame. It seemed to me that this would be cosier for him than the wooden house type. However, the construction is only meant to be a shelter I think, and it advises covering. So as you can see from the pictures below I placed the structure on a little pallet, then surrounded it with bricks and covered it with roofing felt, packing the space between with plenty of straw. I then put a few handfuls of dry leaves inside, and left piles outside for him to take in himself. Then I waited and hoped that he wasn’t too disgusted at what I’d done to his little napping shelter!

Before I went to bed that night I saw him furtling around in the area of the new house, but it wasn’t til the next morning, around half past six, that he was seen taking some leaves into his new home. As usual he was bustling really fast, and it was amazing to see him carrying the leaves in his mouth and rushing inside his igloo! Since then I’ve put several more fresh piles of dry leaves outside, and he’s taken lots inside, so I think he is probably going to make this his winter retreat. I will make sure he’s nice and cosy by adding some fleece to the top once I can get hold of some.

I’ve been trying to get a picture of him carrying leaves, but it’s terribly difficult without disturbing him, even though he’s only about six feet from my back door! I have to poke my little camera through the cat flap, which isn’t the best position to photograph anything. These are the best one’s I’ve managed to date, taken last night while he was carrying leaves into the nest, although admittedly he could be doing anything from the photos (click on them for a slightly better image):

I’ll try to get some better pictures if I can. In the meantime here are some links to places you can find out more information on saving hedgehogs, and buy hedgehog houses:

British Hedgehog Preservation Society including page on making hedgehog houses and lots of other information.

Wiggly Wigglers hedgehog house, although many garden centres have plenty of wildlife habitats for sale, which is where we bought ours.

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A little bee activity today for the first time in a while - they haven’t been enjoying the wet weather.

Here we see a leaf-cutter bee backing out of the tube she’s been working on (two pictures on the left), turning round (center right), and backing back into the tube (far right) in order to lay an egg. Click on the thumbnails for larger images.

The other things you can see: tubes with a small black mark above them are tubes which she has already laid eggs into and sealed, this year. Sealed tubes with no black mark are ones which were laid into last year and did not hatch. Tubes with a hole in the leaves are where bees hatched earlier in the summer.

Click here to find more posts on the leaf-cutter bees.

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Today I’ll be posting pictures taken of my leaf-cutter bees live at the bee tubes, which are right outside my artist’s studio. Take a look at these earlier posts to find out all about these solitary bees.

1) And here are the first pictures of the day, a leaf-cutter clearing out paper from inside one of the tubes (click on the thumbnails for a closer look):

Above left: here you can see many empty (so far unused) tubes, plus ones with brown leaf debris around the outside where bees hatched last month. There are two tubes which have already been filled with eggs and ‘bee bread’ (rather than honey, which these bees do not make) - these are the tubes with fresh leaves sealing them. Towards the top left of the picture a bee can be seen clearing a new tube of paper (which is put there by the tube manufacturers) ready to begin making her nest of leaves in which she will lay eggs.

Above right: a close-up of this bee clearing the tube.

2) A second bee arrives.

Above left: The first bee is still clearing a tube, when this bee arrives at the nest site. Although leaf-cutters are ’solitary’ bees, and do not form colonies or hives like other bees, they do not mind nesting in adjoining tubes, and do not seem to fight. They are also very safe bees to have in the garden as you can see - the site of the nest is right outside my studio and next to garden chairs!

Above right: She checks out several tubes, going in and out, and nibbling around the edges, deciding whether to nest.

3) A few pictures from the end of last month, when the bees were sealing the tubes you see closed above:

Above left: Two bees at work at the tubes.

Above, centre: The leaves used to seal the tubes may be cut to shape on-site. Here the bee has gone in search of more leaves, as they build with many layers. You can see the marks where she’s forming the leaf into the correct shape, and at the same time sealing the tube.

Above, right: She returns to finish off the job.

4) Meanwhile, down in the bamboo bee nest…

Above left and centre: bees arrive with circles of leaf to line and seal the cells into which they lay eggs.

Above right: two of the bamboo canes fully sealed. As you can see the bees use rose petals at times as well as leaves.

Well the occasional showers have now turned into what looks like more prolonged rain… and I don’t think there will be any further activity from the bees today. Thanks for visiting, and perhaps try encouraging these fascinating creatures to your garden.

Some links:

Buy the cylinders yourself and encourage solitary bees to your garden, they’re available from WigglyWigglers, CJ Wildbird Foods, and other places online (search ‘Oxford Bee Company’).

Also, check out these articles on solitary bees, the best plants to grow for bees, and the Co-Op site on saving bees.

Learn more about helping bees by following the tweets of @JordansBigBuzz and @HelpSaveBees who post lots of bee news and information every day. And follow @Tweehive. Find out about the #tweehive here: Tweehive.com

Follow me on Twitter.

Follow this link to see all posts on leaf-cutter bees.

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An update on what the leaf-cutter bees are doing at the moment. Some bees are still hatching. The clicking sound of the bees nibbling away at the dried leaf cells is very audible if you’re sitting anywhere near the tubes, so it’s easy to know when they are working their way out! Here is a previous post showing leaf-cutter bees hatching, and here you can see that they are now hatching from the wooden bee house:

I feel I must say that although this bee house above looks beautiful, as you can see the bees have not favoured it, and prefer the cylinder-type houses. The reason for this seems to be that many of the holes are simply the wrong size or shape. One bee last year attempted to nest in one of the lower holes, and gave up the attempt (see above, right). The two circular holes either side of the ones which have been nested in cannot be used at all, because there are small nails blocking the tubes. So if you are purchasing bee homes, please look out for all these things before making a selection.

Meanwhile, bees that have been about for a week or so are looking for suitable nest sites. So if you have put up some bee houses (which you can order from e.g. here or here) recently, or have nests from last year, this is the kind of thing to look out for. On the left, the bee is exploring the new tubes, centre picture she seems to have chosen to re-use one of the old tubes, and emerges with white paper, which is thrown below as debris (far right):

Finally for now, one of the bees resting after emerging, and enjoying some of the garden flowers (see more plants to attract bees here):

Follow this link to see all posts on leaf-cutter bees.

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Why attract leaf-cutter bees?

Quite a few people on Twitter have been asking me about my solitary bees since I started posting photographs of them hatching, so I thought I’d write a post to answer some of the most common questions. Leaf-cutter bees are incredible creatures to encourage into your garden or allotment - great to observe and look after, and they are wonderful pollinators. This kind of bee is a ‘solitary bee‘ which does not form a hive or make honey, but works alone, although they will nest side-by-side and not fight or compete. They are in fact perfect bees for the garden, and safe around children as they do not store honey and so have nothing to ‘defend’ from attack. They are quite happy to let you go right up to the nest to see what they’re doing, as you can see from these shots of a bee hatching in my garden this week (click for a closer view):

What do the bees do in the tubes..?

The tubes are just the right size to allow the bees to easily construct their nest cells, which they make from circles of leaves. The bees fly out into your garden, cut perfect circles from your rose bush leaves (see also photo below, third from left), and fly back to the nest. You can follow them around your garden as they do this! Once back at the nest, the bee will curl up the circle of leaf, and take it into the tube with her. A bee will need many leaf circles to make each cell, since she lines the sides of the tube as well as sealing both ends of each cell with many layers of leaves. Before she seals each cell, she lays one egg, and puts food of pollen ‘bee bread’ to enable the hatched larvae to eat and grow during the time the cell is sealed. All of these activities can be observed by watching the tubes during the summer. Also fun to watch are the females bees clearing out old tubes at the beginning of the season; kicking out old leaf-debris in previously-used tubes, or removing the paper inserts from newer tubes (see photo below, second from left). These bees prefer to re-use an old tube rather than re-line a completely new one with leaves, and will ignore new tubes if there are any empty, weather-beaten tubes to re-colonise!

The life-cycle of leaf-cutter bees, in brief: The young bees emerge from their nests in June, and mate. After this the males die, and the females begin the work of nesting and laying eggs. Once sealed into the cells the eggs hatch, and the larvae feed on the ‘bee bread’, grow, pupate and develop into the bees which then hatch almost a year after they were laid as eggs. These newly-hatched bees mate, lay their eggs, and die before the summer is over, never seeing their off-spring.

How can I start encouraging solitary bees into my garden?

Where to buy the nests: The Oxford Bee Company who originally sold the cylinders and tubes is no longer trading, but cylinders and tubes can be purchased from various places online, for example WigglyWigglers and CJ Wildbird Foods. Or search online for ‘Oxford Bee Company’ for other suppliers. You can also make nests yourself out of old garden canes and similar stems, or by drilling holes in a block of wood, and these are successful. But I have found that the bees can be a little fussy about the diameter of hole they prefer, and many of the tubes may go unused if they are too big or too small - however these may be used by other bees or insects. I have had mason bees (which make their cells out of mud) nesting alongside the leaf-cutters in my nests.

Siting: The first year I tried the cylinders I attached them to a sunny wooden fence, but while there was some interest from bees that summer, none of them nested. I have since found that the bees do not particularly like the tubes when they are new, and prefer them to be somewhat weathered. However, I have also heard that the vibrations caused by the fence moving in the wind may also have discouraged them from settling. So I have followed advice to place the cylinders in a stable and sunny spot, a few feet from the ground, and preferably somewhere the tubes won’t get wet.

Plants to grow: There is a very useful site here which lists the kinds of plants that bees love. Obviously, leaf-cutters also like roses from which to harvest nest material, but they will use other similar plants and of course fly around the neighbourhood in order to locate suitable leaves! And equally obviously don’t use chemical sprays in the garden, as these are poisonous to bees; consider gardening Organically with wildlife controls, barriers, etc., it really is the only way if you want to encourage any kind of wildlife.

Over winter: Once the summer is over and the tubes are all sealed, you will need to put the cylinders somewhere dry and cool for the bees to over-winter. A garden shed seems ideal, but don’t forget to take them out again next Spring! Once Spring comes, re-position your cylinders where they were the previous year, and wait for the new bees to hatch. My leaf-cutters begin to hatch in the first weeks of June, towards Midsummer.

Lastly: Don’t be discouraged if no bees nest in the first year. It may well take a little while for them to find the nests and settle in. Also, you will find that if you stop spraying chemicals in your garden, and plant more of the bee-friendly plants, you will see a definite increase in bees and other interesting wildlife in your garden anyway!

Some links:

Learn more about helping bees by following the tweets of @JordansBigBuzz and @HelpSaveBees who post lots of bee news and information every day.

Follow me on Twitter.

Also, check out these articles on solitary bees, the best plants to grow for bees, and the Co-Op site on saving bees.

Follow this link to see all posts on leaf-cutter bees.

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Above: Stages of work on the studio drawing - the final piece can be seen below.

When I was young I always wanted a little place at the bottom of the garden to which I could retreat and take my books, notepaper and pens, and found items such as the stones, shells, feathers and other objects that still fascinate me.  Now I have managed to create that retreat as somewhere to work, to imagine, and to get my ideas out on paper in words and images.

My new work concentrates on the need we have to create and retreat to our own spaces, whether they be dolls’ houses, childhood dens under a hedge, or the garden shed. I think it’s an impulse entirely natural to us; something like animals creating their own homes in trees and hedgerows, and furnishing them with feathers, moss, leaves and sometimes more decorative items. I suppose this is one reason I am interested in birds’ nests, bees creating their little cells and storing pollen, and even in the tunnels of the ants’ nest under a stone.

Above: Some of my garden wildlife - click for larger images.

Six months ago, I set my mind on a completely new career in Art. I had been drawing again after a hiatus of two decades, re-visiting my early fascination with extremely detailed pen and ink work, and I came to realise that this was something I’d love to do on a full-time basis: but where? Up until then I’d been using the dining table for drawing, and storing my paper and drawings in portfolios behind the sofa. I knew that if I wanted to approach this professionally I’d need to find space for a full-sized drawing table and map chest at minimum. And preferably more space to allow for cutting, storage of art materials and a computer and printer. I needed a place for thinking and doing; somewhere which would be entirely devoted to all phases of the creative process from staring out of the window, onwards.

I’d already been using the tiny summerhouse as a place to sketch during the summer, but being small and either damp from the rain or baking in the sunshine (and often full of tomato plants) it was no place for paper! I began thinking of a much larger garden shed, did some searches online, and discovered a whole new world of ‘garden offices’ , gyms and saunas and all sorts of structures that could be erected in just a few days. I decided to turn the available space at the end of the garden over to a brand new purpose-built studio; a place which would be a world away from drawing on the dining room table when household activities permitted.

Above: Working on the dining room table, and the old summerhouse.

In a matter of weeks we’d had a site visit from one of the building companies, and discussed with them exactly what size building could be squeezed into the tiny space available, and what features I could have. Having everything to hand, in a beautifully sunlit, warm, dry atmosphere was the vision, and  I chose a higher-than standard ceiling (though it still seems only ‘adequate’ to me - I can’t bear low ceilings!), full windows along the south-facing entrance, and two more on the eastern side. In less than a month the structure was made in their factory, and then erected here on site in just under three days. By Christmas I had my studio, with electricity, heating, Internet access and plenty of space.

Click here to see the before and after photographs of the building process.

The next step was to furnish it with a drawing table and other necessary furniture. I bought and re-covered the drawing table, a complete bargain on Ebay, and also the map chest which is from around the 1950s and beautifully constructed. Then it was time to start deciding on a computer on which to write my all-important artist’s web-site; the process of which will be the subject of a future blog post.

Above: The finished studio.

After working here now for a few months I can say that the decision to have the studio built was probably one of the best I’ve ever made, as it really is no exaggeration to say it has changed my life completely. I absolutely love the peace and quiet of the setting, which is right in the heart of the garden with all its life and action: something not even visible from the house because of the layout of the terraced property. Now every day I’m at work is enlivened with animal and bird activity, from the inquisitive squirrel staring in through the window to the strange scrabbling of the pigeons on the roof. Even rainy days become interesting with frogs flinging themselves from the pond in search of lunch! Coffee breaks can be taken on the decking overlooking the pond or staring at passing clouds, and the home commute is blissful.

Living in the Midlands, I’m about as far as you can get from the sea in Britain, and yet my garden has something of the feel of the coast because of my love and collection of shells and pebbles. Dad loved to sail, and I have remnants of his little boat all around the garden; the mast and boom provide climbing frames for hops and vines, and this last picture of my ‘commute home’ (above) shows part of his small anchor. Everywhere I look there are things to fascinate and remind me of why I do what I do. All these objects, and the setting, are of vital importance to the creation of my work, which is all about memory, remains and place.

The Studio, Stourbridge: Graphite on paper, 2009.

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