Some of the team members joined Lancashire, Manchester and North Merseyside Wildlife Trust on a Bumblebee ID Day on the 10th of April 2015 at White Coppice, a hamlet near Chorley, Lancashire. Here we were joined by volunteers and staff from the Wildlife Trust and were led by Ben Hargreaves, a ranger for the trust.

On this ID Day, we were looking for the Bilberry Bee (Bombus montecola), a member of the Bombus family known for it’s distinctive rusty red/orange on it’s abdomen and bright yellow bands on it’s thorax. The bee is usually found on higher hills and moorlands in the west and the north of Britain. Here it is known to visit plenty of flowers, including it’s namesake – Bilberry. It’s colonies are small and the bumblebee itself is charecterised by it’s small and compact body with a broad head and a short tongue.

(The Trustees of the Natural History Museum)

After a few hours of walking up and down the small river that splits the hills at White Coppice from the small hamlet there, and seeing many Buff Tailed and White Tailed Bumblebee the team finally spotted a Bilberry Bee feeding from the Blossom of a Willow tree.

White Coppice was the most populated part of the township of Anglezarke in the 19th century and close to the settlement in the 19th century were quarries and small coal mines. White Coppice had a cotton mill at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution and it’s mill lodge provided the water for a steam engine. Before this, the mill was powered by a waterwheel on the Black Brook.