Richard Comont retweeted
Please join us for Young Entomologists Day Sat 29th August for all your insect fascinations! 🪲 🦋 🪰 🦗 🐝
Join us this Saturday for AES's Young Entomologists' Day 2026 – a fantastic opportunity to meet fellow insect enthusiasts, hear from expert speakers, take part in activities and discover where a passion for insects could take you.
📅 29 August, NHM
royensoc.co.uk/event/young-e…
Richard Comont retweeted
Jeremy Clarkson runs at least eight businesses off a thousand acres in Oxfordshire. Seven of them make money.
Count them. A farm shop. A pub. A lager brand. A bestselling book every autumn. A streaming series. A merchandise range. And now an app, built by Lisa Hogan, connecting the public to farms.
Then the eighth. Growing food.
Year one, working the ground flat out: £144. By year six, a £5,000 loss where £37,000 had been projected. This summer, two hundred of those acres grew nothing at all, because putting wheat in them was a guaranteed loss before the drill left the shed.
Every enterprise on that farm turns a profit except the farming.
The lager tells you why, and the chain of cause is on the record. Government subsidies were falling, so in 2021 he decided to brew beer from his own barley. That is the entire origin of Hawkstone. A decision taken in Whitehall turned an arable farmer into a brewer, and the beer worked.
Nothing about the grain changed. Barley sold as barley goes at whatever the buyer offers that morning. Barley in a bottle goes at the price the man who grew it decides.
That one difference is the whole business.
The pub is the same move in bricks. A derelict barn nobody had wanted since 2013, bought for reportedly under a million, now with a queue. On the menu a sausage from his own pigs costs 74p against 18p for the imported version, and he absorbs that gap on every plate. The farm shop, meanwhile, is legally barred from selling food produced more than sixteen miles away, and still cannot keep up with demand.
Now look at what the farming has behind it that yours does not. One of the best land agents in England. A farm manager who has worked that ground since he was a teenager. An agronomist. A production company covering the costs. A queue down the lane. A name that sells anything it is printed on.
It loses money anyway.
And this is the ordinary arrangement, not an eccentric one. Defra's own figures say 72 percent of farms in England now take income from something that is not farming, and diversification accounts for 31 percent of total farm income. The government's own Batters Review found nearly a third of British farms were loss-making outright in 2024.
Diddly Squat is simply the loudest version. The shop subsidises the field. The pub subsidises the field. The television subsidises the field.
A thousand acres of English farmland, and the one thing it cannot do is pay for itself by producing food.
Richard Comont retweeted
#BeeWashing at its best! In the 1950s in the UK there were around 250,000 hives similar to what we have today. The issue is that we have lost so much wildflower forage in that time so there is increasing pressure on our wild pollinators. Honeybees are not the solution
Richard Comont retweeted
Listen to my thoughts on #BeeWashing that went out live on BBC Radio Gloucestershire this morning. Fast forward to 1:51:00 bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002yx…
Richard Comont retweeted
Bumblebees are struggling in UK heatwaves - but you can help them bbc.in/3ROlcwO
Richard Comont retweeted
1. It's No Mow May. I'm broadly in support of it. But like most concepts of this sort, it's an over-simplification of a complex matter & can backfire. It you are a ground nesting bee for instance (or an associated insect), you don't want long grass swamping your nesting area.
Richard Comont retweeted
A selection of pages from our #FliesofBritainandIreland has just been spotted by this bee-fly - due mid-Feb 2026. Pre-pub offer runs until 31 Jan - order your copy now bit.ly/4dqQI8Z @StevenFalk1 @Ecoentogeek @flygirlNHM @DipteristsForum
🦋🌿Hiring 12 x Botanists or Entomologists for 2026 field surveys in England!
4-month, full-time roles from late April to early September.
Field sites in Yorkshire, Devon, Warwickshire, Kent/Sussex, Lincolnshire/Cambridge, Essex/Suffolk.
Apply now: f.mtr.cool/majeflnjbl
Found this Bombardier Beetle (Brachinus crepitans) in a spiderweb in the garden this morning - bet the spider got a bit of a shock!
Richard Comont retweeted
Love #bumblebees? Then you probably know they're in crisis, and need our help
You can help by supporting the very lovely @bumble_being raise funds for @BumblebeeTrust as she walks the Northumberland Coast Path🐝👣
Donate here👇 and please share, too!
justgiving.com/page/charlott…
Richard Comont retweeted
field-studies-council.org/sh… Micro ladybirds made easy thanks to this bargain guide. @UKLadybirds please share! @RichardComont @thiswordistaken @Theponker
Richard Comont retweeted
British pollinators are now starting to fly. Great fun to watch, and to try and identify. Many resources are out there, but here's one I've produced that is free and online flickr.com/photos/63075200@N…. Great coverage of bees, hoverflies etc. Images & species accounts.
Richard Comont retweeted
Bats or great-crested newts? "Neither because I want growth" is simply one of the stupidest, immoral and most dismal political answers ever. I'm #teambat #teamnewt #teamhuman #teamhabitableplanet This story I wrote over the weekend has been cheering me up theguardian.com/world/2025/j…
Richard Comont retweeted
🚜FARMAGEDDON🌾
The story of what's REALLY going on in farming. A story far more complex than the conventional wisdom.
This isn't just (or even mainly) about inheritance tax. It's about a cascade of challenges & crises that may ultimately threaten food security.
📽️5 min primer👇
Richard Comont retweeted
I hear too many 'just so' stories about nature loss & approaches to recovery
We need science to attribute causes of loss & to assess if & how conservation approaches work
Richard Comont retweeted
I’m seeing a lot of anger and disappointment in badger circles today that the badger cull is ending, but not ending fast enough. Apologies for the long thread 🧵, but tet me explain why I think the news is the best it could be 1/25
Richard Comont retweeted
Bumblebee expert Richard Comont tells you everything you need to know about these social bees.
discoverwildlife.com/animal-…
Richard Comont retweeted
In June #GtMB, Emily, & a small group were joined by Dr @RichardComont from @BumblebeeTrust, for a Bumblebee ID session at the @nationaltrust's #JinlyeMeadow
🐝Learning how to identify lots of different bumblebees found in Shropshire, even spotting the Bilberry Bumblebee!
🧵/3
Richard Comont retweeted
What's a butterfly bush without butterflies?
This empty buddleia has been the sad reality for many of us across the UK this summer 🧵👇
Richard Comont retweeted
Fully-funded PhD on moth trapping, automated ID, climate extremes & predator responses, with @DavidRoyBRC and me at @UniExeCEC in Cornwall. Deadline ** 29 July **. Please share! exeter.ac.uk/study/funding/a…
































