One of my favourite plants (after cacao that produces chocolate!) is the avocado. They are one of the most delicious and nutritious fruits around… Avocado trees are one of the many different crops that depend on wild insects pollinators. I recently spent some time in the Kerio Valley looking at the insects visiting the avocado … Read more
Dear All Many greetings. Am very pleased to share with you a book featuring and celebrating pollinator diversity in East Africa. You can download the book through link by clicking on the cover image below: To whet your appetite here’s a sneak preview of some of the pages from the book: You can … Read more
In keeping with the theme of where bees nest… A few weeks ago walking back in the evening from a day of looking at bees on farms, I noticed something sparkle on the path. Peering closer I discovered that it was a beautiful Seladonia bee and I wondered what she was doing out so … Read more
Dear All On a recent hike in southern Tanzania at the edge of the Uluguru Mountains I came across one of East Africa’s largest bee: the Giant Carpenter Bee (Xylocopa nigrita). This is a striking bee where the males and females are sexually dimorphic: meaning that they look very different. The females are boldly marked … Read more
Hello – greetings from Turkana in Northern Kenya… Up here checking in on my lab at the Turkana Basin Institute and spent half a day looking at bees pollinating the cucumbers being cultivated at the institute. Cucumbers are one of my favourite salad items and make a refreshing snack up here in the desert at … Read more
Hello – just spent a lovely day looking at bees in the Kerio Valley (one of my favourite parts of the world!). An extension of the Great Rift Valley in northwestern Kenya, the Kerio Valley is a beautiful and diverse landscape that is especially rich in bees. The Kerio Valley is also home to a … Read more
Dear All Many greetings, the rains over the last couple of months have brought forth some wonderful flowers out on the plains. Now with the mix of sunshine and abundant flowers, it is a fantastic time for the bees who are out and about in large numbers. Many other insects are also making hay while … Read more
Greetings from Turkana in Northern Kenya. I recently visited one of the farms that I work with up here and was very pleased to find the coriander (cilantro) flowering. This plant is a common and delicious herb that is widely used in the cuisines of many different parts of the world… Many of us are … Read more
Dear All Many greetings. I have been up in the hot and dusty reaches of Turkana in northern Kenya. Most people only hear about this region as a place of drought and suffering. Turkana is also a beautiful, biodiversity-rich and potentially productive place… I recently visited a pilot farming project in a remote area south … Read more
Dear All – having been weighing and counting ants on the Whistling Thorns for some research work related to my PhD. There are a few alates around – these are the winged reproductive forms of ants… Each colony produces many hundreds, even thousands of alates that take off into the sky as part of a … Read more