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Living World

Factual: Science & Nature: Nature & Environment

The Living World

Getting up close and personal with wild nature in Britain and beyond.

Intimate encounters and extraordinary observations of wild nature in Britain and beyond.

Living World: A Shell Nesting Bee

02/07/2017

A Shell Nesting Bee

BBC Radio 4 - Living World, A Shell Nesting Bee

Trai Anfield is in Dorset with naturalist John Walters. From 2014.

Brett Westwood relives programmes from the Living World archives. In this episode from 2014, Trai Anfield is in Dorset with naturalist John Walters.

Brett Westwood relives programmes from The Living World archives. In this episode from 2014, Trai Anfield is in Dorset with naturalist John Walters.

Solitary bees build their nests in some interesting places, but none more so than Osmia bicolor, a mason bee that's preferred real estate is the empty shells of snails. Emerging in spring a few weeks after the males, the mated female spends two days lining and provisioning the shell before laying her eggs and sealing the shell. But she's not finished yet. Perhaps to prevent hungry predators in search of its original slimy occupant from destroying her nest, the snail bee hides the shell under a wigwam of twigs and sticks. Join presenter 

Trai Anfield and naturalist John Walters as they look for this pioneering little bee on the chalk hillsides above Cerne Abbas.

Producer Andrew Dawes.

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