Dear All I recently went hiking in the Pugu Hills which are near the port city of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. These hills contain some precious fragments of forests that once covered most of the East African coastal areas. However, today only tiny patches of forest remain. These forests are home to a lot … 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
Dear All I recently participated in an expedition through parts of northwestern Kenya to look at different kinds of bees. The first thing that surprises many people about bees is that there are lots of different kinds of bees – in fact close to 20,000 species have been described! The honeybee, which is familiar to … Read more
Dear All Greetings – have been travelling with limited email access (and time!). A few weeks ago I was in northern Kenya at the Turkana Basin Institute looking at bees. A yellow-flowered legume, Crotolaria, was blooming in one site near the river and it was covered in some of the most amazing bees… Here are … 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 Greetings – just back in Kenya after various travels. There is a sunflower on the breakfast table and I watched a honeybee visited it this morning in the dreamy African sunshine… The honeybee was after pollen – here is a close up of the anthers: The honeybee lifts itself into the air and … Read more
Hello! While watching the eggplant flowers for pollinators in Turkana I noticed that some of the leaves of several nearby bell-pepper plants had neat circular pieces cut out from them… I sat down to watch the plants, suspecting that the perpetrator would be back soon. A few minutes later an fervent buzzing zipped up to … 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 A few days ago I visited a friend of mine who runs a farm on the outskirts of Nairobi. Su Kahumbu is an organic farmer who does amazing work with farmers across Kenya promoting sustainable agriculture and innovation… One of the crops growing at her beautiful model farm are raspberries. These delicious fruits are … Read more
Dear All – Greetings, am on a journey to the US here. Just before leaving Kenya I met these three beautiful bees… More from the world of bugs soon!