Pearson Park Wildlife Garden

I've mentioned the Pearson Park Wildlife Garden previously in this blog. It continues to be a work in progress and still has very little by way of web presence -very little by way of any publicity at all really I suspect if I didn't pass the entrance on an occassional run I wouldn't've noticed it existed myself.

Welcome to the Just Outside the South Corner of Pearson Park, Wildlife Garden

The Yorkshire Wildlife Trust actually has two web pages for it here and here neither of which really inspire a visit unfortunately. There's also a Facebook Page which has various green links pictures and requests for volunteers, created in September 2011 it has 136 likes at the time of writing so evidently it's not really being pushed at the moment. Oh there's also some pretty good pictures of the denizens of the garden (and the park) on the Wild at Hull blog.

Free herbs for all!

One reason to visit the garden is to pick up some free herbs. They have an impressive herb garden you can pop to and snip a little of whatever you need from. I didn't see much by way of signage though so you'll have to be able to recognise what you want.

There's things wriggling in that water

The project also has a pond which is quite large, albeit very shallow. I'm not entirely sure what uses the pond but I think I've seen dragonflies in the area and there's definitely damselflies. I'd assume there's a frog population too and I've been told there's newts in the main pond in the park so I'd expect there to be a few in here too.

A pile of wood. Things sleep in it. Not just rats. Hopefully.

There's various piles of stuff for wildlife to sleep/nest or hibernate in ranging from woodpiles to pallets of various bits of stuff like twigs, bamboo canes, paper, sand and other stuff which whilst about as pleasing to the eye as a quick poke with a pencil should be useful for the wildlife. There's also some bundles of tied twigs and sticks which probably have some practical purpose other than giving the place a slightly sinister Blair Witch feel. There's also seating areas, bird baths, bird tables, bird boxes, bat boxes and a vegetable plot tucked out of the way. A little fenced off area with a tended lawn houses a rain guage and a Stevenson Screen which I would assume houses some temperature and humidity measuring kit. I think the place would be better off losing that really and having a bit more nature space but it's probably got some educational purpose or something.

By now you're probably thinking "This is another WTF about the bees posts.." well I was getting to that. Slowly. I've previously mentioned that the wildlife garden acquired a colony of Carniolans in a WBC hive in 2010. Whilst these originally slavik bees are particularly good at overwintering they perished in the freakishly long and snowy 2010/2011 winter. As a breed they actually have quite a reputation for swarming so they're possibly not the best choice for a city apiary. However they soon got some more bees, I don't know what type but when I encoutered a girl there emptying dead bees from the WBC she'd said they were hoping to catch a local swarm so probably buckfasts or some mongrel derivative. This year they've made it through very easy winter and also rather difficult sprin.

WBC, National and Topbar Hives

For reasons unknown to me they seem keen to mix it up a little in their apiary.  After getting some more bees into their WBC hive (the one on the left with the slanty sides and sloping roof) they added a kenyan top bar hive (the dark brown tabley looking one on the right) and this year's new addition is a National Hive (middle one like a tin topped tea chest). The National is meant to be something of a standard hive in England at present. It uses frames interchangeable with the WBC and I'd guess it was added to house an artificial swarm from the WBC, although I could be wrong -haven't actually asked anyone afterall. The kenyan top bar hive (actuall invented in the UK and not Kenya, but popular there) seems to have been turned and the entrance moved. When I looked at it in the winter it had the entrance at one end facing forwards like the WBC but now the entrance is in the middle of the side.

Drone Fly, declined to look at the camera.

Ther herb garden seemed popular with various polinators such as the drone fly above, a range of bumble bees, the park's resident honey bees, hover flies and just to add a little confusion for any budding entymologists and photographers hoverflies pretending to be bees. Given the distance I've no doubt my own bees forage here too and there's a pretty good chance my Queens have mated with drones from these hives.

Some kind of Bumble Bee, bumbling. As they do.

Honey Bee, working hard in the herb garden.

A bee happily working a red flower, except she thinks it's black
because bees can't see red. So there.