Saturday Morning With Jack Tame

A moth or so ago I was walking around the Halswell Quarry, looking for native bees. We have about 28 species of these bees in New Zealand, and the unfortunate thing is that we know very little about these creatures.  A new book by Rachel Weston described how these tiny bees make holes in the ground where their larvae (babies) are raised. The air space around those tunnels is quite busy, with bees coming and going constantly; some air traffic control could well be a useful asset to these tiny habitats!    I didn’t just find a heap of native bees but also a few holes of significant size: conically shaped holes with a diameter of at least 30 millimetres, situated in a dry bit of soil, protected from regular rain fall.   It reminded me of the holes I used to have under the eaves of our old open car port.   In the pit of these holes live a very clever Neuropteran insects, known as Antlions. The cool thing is that this extraordinary species is the only “antlion” endemic to New Zealand – it