THE Isle of Man Post Office will be issuing new bee fauna stamps in August.
These images are so life-like you can almost smell the honey – as the issue is being printed on scented paper!
Apart from the honeybee, the Isle of Man is home to approximately 15 species of bumblebee, and 57 species of solitary bee.
Currently there are known to be 24 species of bumblebee and over 200 solitary bee species recorded from the British Isles.
In the island, these bees can be found foraging from flowers on mountain moorlands, where the lovely Bilberry Bumblebee, among several other bee species, can be found visiting bilberry and heather flowers, right down to the island’s coastal fringes.
Most people will be familiar with some of the various species of bumblebees that visit our garden flower beds, but the solitary bees will be less familiar and it may be only when they are nesting in the lawns or flower beds that people notice them. They are called solitary because, unlike the honey and bumble bees, there is no worker caste and they do not live in colonies, although they can form large nesting aggregations such as those of the species Colletes succinctus. Other solitary bees, known as cuckoo bees, forgo the labour of building and provisioning their own nests but sneak their eggs into the nests of other bees. The silver and white Epeolus variegatus is one such cuckoo bee which can be found on the Ayres, where it takes advantage of the efforts of other bees such as species of the genus Colletes.
In the island there are about 120 beekeepers. One hundred of them are fully paid-up members of the Isle of Man Beekeepers Federation to the British Beekeepers Association, comprising of three districts. It is estimated that there are at least 400 colonies kept by these beekeepers or the Bumblebee Conservation Trust.
To find out more about the stamps, which will be issued on August 8, visit www.iomstamps.com