Eye on Nature

On a recent visit to a house in Donegal which had been closed up since February, we found the window sills of the breakfast room covered with dead bees. As the doors and windows were closed the only access was from the chimney (of a tall, two-storey house). Are these wild bees? What brought them into the house, and why were they not able to get out again?

Nodlaig P Hardiman, SCR, Dublin, 8

They were the remains of a swarm of hive bees which made a home in the chimney. Those that died on the window sills were probably only part of the swarm; they had made their way down the chimney and then tried in vain to get out through the windows.

Walking along by Bray Head I noticed several cocoons of the six-spot burnet moth which had little black things protruding from the cocoon. Are these moths common in Ireland? I have just seen a bee caught in a spider's web. It fought with the spider and then seemed to ooze a small amount of yellow liquid. It died and was eaten. Did the spider give it a poisonous bite?

Mary Fitzgerald, Terenure, Dublin 6W

The pupae of burnet moths partly escape from the cocoon before the adults emerge. The six-spot burnet is very common and widely distributed in Ireland. Spiders have poisonous fangs with which they stab their prey behind the head, where the nerves are concentrated, and paralyse them.

Edited by Michael Viney, who welcomes observations sent to him at Thallabawn, Carrowniskey PO, Westport, Co Mayo. e-mail: viney@anu.ie. Observations sent by e-mail should be accompanied by postal address as location is sometimes important to identification or behaviour.