Annual Records by Month
| August | Despite press excitement at the wasp epidemic August turned out to be something of a damp squib in terms of search results. This could be that the site has lost some of strength in rankings but it is certainly very unusual for August to be lower in volume than July. The peak day of the year turns out to be the 18th July one of the earliest experienced. My own view is that the difficult winter brought forward bee activity a little earlier than normal and certainly sting activity grew dramatically. It just as dramatically tailed off in the second half of August making August overall a relatively quiet month when comparedto previous years. |
| July | As the graph illustrates July showed a very rapid almost doubling of sting activity from June - the biggest increase since our records began and illustrating the difficult start to the year and generally clement weather conditions for wasps and bees during 2010. This is something of a relief to the entomologists and it seems that whilst overally activity levels are some 25% down on 2009, July shows a definite acceleration towards generally higher sting levels for August. |
| June | The month has proven to be a warm dry month across the UK generally with hosepipe bans introduced in North West England and generally considered to be the driest first half of the year for many years. This has probably not been beneficial to the stinging insects population and whilst sting traffic on the web has grown from May we have still not recovered to the levels seen in the last few years. |
| May | May has proven my forecast wrong yet again with a decline in web searches for stings - the first time this has happened in the history of this website. The manic month of April should have continued into May as the weather across the UK has been very insect friendly. Gentle rain with generally warm days and nights with just the occasional frosts. So it is a real puzzle as to why the insect population has taken a comparatively low profile - unless it was the truly desperate winter still taking its toll. A real puzzle! |
| April | April was a breath of warm air for the bee and wasp population as a much more benign climate encouraged queens out in numbers - it seems that many of the March hibernators came out in April and together with the usual April wakers combined to generate almost record numbers for April - 20% higher than April in 2009. The bounce back in April was so significant that 2010 is now back on track to become one of the busiest years for stinging insects since 2004. |
| March | The low numbers of bumblebees continue to cause concern - the very severe weather in January and February largely continued into March which showed below average termperatures and higher than average rainfall for the south of England. Traffic levels are down some 20% on 2009 and whilst March definitely showed some form of bounce back it is reasonable to say for the time being that the insect population continues to have been badly effected by the difficult winter. |
February |
The drop in sting and insect activity continues during February with the general agreement amongst insect specialists being that the severe winter weather in February has hit the bees and wasp dramatically. Numbers typically increase in February as the first bees appear but this year the numbers have dropped and so have "first bee" sightings. There have been very few bumblebees appearing in February even in the south of England. This is a worrying omen for the year. |
January |
A very significant drop in numbers for people seeking information on stinging insects - primarily because, we believe, of the extremely cold and snowy January across the UK and the very difficult conditions for stinging creatures. In real terms we believe stinging activity generally in the UK to be more than 35% down on January of 2009 |
