Nature Notes
Nature Notes 3:
Mystery Solved
A mystery solved. The black flies swarming around apple blossom, rape
fields and above grassland are bibionids. They are true flies, related
to midges and mosquitoes, and known as March flies - hairy, black, with
stout antennae and spiny tibia. The adults don't appear to feed at all,
which leaves their role in the pollination of certain plants still a
mystery. Last year, they were abundant in April too - so this year's
weather has not apparently affected their massively synchronous
emergence. At this time, cycling is best undertaken with a closed mouth.
I snatched up the bibionid from my shorts to bring home to identify, but
then by a field of shimmering rape, a bee lodged inside my shirt, and I
managed to shake it away. A passing car slowed to watch.
Last summer, though, I was stung on the inside of my lip up by Workhouse
Hill. The sting lodged, and I flailed and clawed. It was a day when the
grain driers were roaring across the land, the barley fields harvested
and already brown and resprouting. Wheat was stiff and golden, ready to
go. But rain was in the air. The chemical shock reverberated across my
face like ripples. The swelling began immediately. And that same day, a
book review I had written for the THE was published, containing a line
about not having seen a honeybee all summer. And there it was.
Said Basho in haiku form
"How reluctantly
The bee emerges from deep
Within the peony."
