Tourists

First post in a while - I'm wonding if anyone will read this...

We had a very busy July and August. We were open 7 days a week, starting work each morning at about 9am and finishing at about 8:30pm. Needless to say, this was hard work!

We had an average season in a below average year for French tourism, so for a first year that is not bad.

Since then we have been catching up on paperwork, recovering and preparing the garden for next year.

Next main thing on my list is to pot honey ready for next season.

Its a year since we I found this place for sale. It all started when we went for a weekend camping in Purbeck and went on a 'butterfly walk'. When an 'insect museum' came up in a web search a few days later it seemed an interesting idea. It took a week or so to realise I really wanted to visit and take a look... Then there was 'Life in the Undergrowth' on the TV - I was hooked.

Here is a blog from someone who came to visit/work here for a couple of weeks... http://christy-adventures.blogspot.com/

More soon.

Latest arrivals

This is one of our latest arrivals - an orchid mantis. Not a good picture, but good enough to get an idea. It is small, about 1 cm tall, and it looks just like a flower.

We have two, a male and a female. They need to be kept apart until they are ready to mate, or they would eat each other. This was a bit of a challenge because we only had one empty vivarium. So I put one in a perspex container inside the vivarium - thats why the photo is a little fuzzy.

When they arrived I started to clean out the vivarium, thinking it was empty, when I noticed lots of little creatures in the debris at the bottom. I thought nothing of it for a couple of minutes until I realised they were the off-spring of the previous inhabitants - locusts! If just I'd thrown them in the bin who knows what might have happened... However, I now don't need to search for food for the mantis... until the locusts get a bit bigger than them - if any survive theat long.

The one inside the perspex tube gets an aphid covered sprig of something from the garden everyday.

Today the male was sitting on the outside of the tube - they were eying each other up - but whether they saw each other as a potential snack or as a future mate - or both - who knows.

We discovered capricorne des maison in some of the woodwork that makes the terrace. They are like woodworm, only about 100 times bigger. They're pretty serious if left untreated. So, what to do? The only cures are pretty nasty. I've been recommended Pentachlorophenol which, as it says in the report, is restricted to specialist use in the US. It is widely available in France. For now, I continue to look for a solution. There is around this situation a central issue in our relationship with insects and the wider environment. We can't kill insects without side effects - sometimes serious. On the other hand we can't just ignore them - unless we are ready to tear down the terrace at some point - and build the next out of metal and glass. Mmm, there's a thought!

An insect in the news: (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/5100950.stm). It doesn't seem very important at first glance - who's going to miss a beetle? Why is biodiversity so important? This article sums it up: http://darwin.bio.uci.edu/~sustain/bio65/lec12/b65lec12.htm#Future_Options.

Comments

I just enabled comments from anyone (I didn't realise only 'members' could leave comments until now).

At last!

Once again I've been so busy there hasn't been time to blog.

I have now updated our web page (http://www.lacitedesinsectes.com/). Its now a little more than just our opening hours and location. Parts of it are still not well formatted, but getting it on-line before the tourist season starts is a priority.

I now need to work on stocking the shop. Its hard to predict what will sell, but we have to try to find out.

It is National Insect Week in the UK: http://www.nationalinsectweek.co.uk/index.htm

A new insect discovered in Scotland: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/north_east/5069508.stm - though I'm not sure about the claim that "Nowhere else in Britain, and some would argue in Europe, will you find so much diversity of wildlife in such a confined area." - I've a feeling this area might be a contender. The number and variety of wildlife in this area is pretty impressive - though I'm no expert.

Kittens!

I was going to write more about insects today, but that will have to wait... The cats have had kittens!

They were obviously trying to communicate something to us yesterday. The black cat (male) in particular was very vocal.

We had a storm last night - this area is renowned for electric storms apparently. This morning it was still raining, so I did a walk around to check everything was water proof. As I passed the four au pain (bread oven) I heard the squeaks of the new born. The cats had used a cardboard box (appropriately marked "fragile") on the top of a spare display cabinet. We gave them a basket and a better cardboard box. The weather has turned cold again, so we hope they will be OK. There are two black kittens - like the father (in the photo) and one grey like the mother. We can't keep them though - we will put up a notice for visitors.

Strange creatures

This is one of the insects we keep in the vivarium. It is a phasmid - the stick insect family. These are very easy to look after - they eat bramble leaves and generally hang around upside down pretending to be bits of leaves. When I open the door to feed and water them they sway a bit - as if in a breeze, but otherwise they don't move while anyone is looking. They have a tail which looks a bit scorpion like - to put off predators who see through the dead-vegetation disguise.

We have five - all females. Apparently they don't need males to reproduce, they can lay eggs which produce clones.

The eggs have a bit which is attractive to ants. The ants take the eggs to their antheap, eat part and discard the egg. When the egg hatches the lava look and act like ants! Once they leave the antheap they take the adult form and pretend to be dead vegetation...

Busy, busy, busy...

We opened the museum on 15th April.

Preparations to open kept us very busy, and we are still working from morning until night. There is so much to do! Now the museum is open, and we are starting to understand the rhythm's of the place.

Highlights of the past few weeks have been:-

• Collecting wood ants from the forest for the ant-heap in the museum.
• Seeing a red squirel - on the window-sill!
• Finding a dragonfly nymph in the pond. Dragonflies spend the majority of their lives as nymphs.
• Feeding the praying mantis
  
• Selling our first honey
  
• Finishing our two guest rooms
• Finishing our own bedroom and bathroom. We are still 'camping' though; we need a wardrobe before we can move in.
  

The weather has improved, and spring is arriving. I heard a cuckoo this morning. Spring here seems to come a little later than Limoges - just an hour away. It may be the altitude (600m), or maybe the variety of deciduous trees here (oak, chestnut and beech I think). The trees still have a redish tinge from the buds rather than the vibrant green when the buds start to open.

Introducing...

Every museum needs a cat. This one has two.
They are nearly wild and live outside - coming to the house once a day for food.

We haven't given them names, it doesn't seem appropriate. If they had names before, the previous owner could only remember one of them (which we immediately forgot).

The grey (female) disappeared for a couple of days and we were getting worried. The black (male) spent an afternoon trying to tell us something - later in the day we found the grey had got itself locked into the large room at the top of the museum building. We let it out and fed it, and for once it was almost friendly - purring and rubbing our legs. It is now the more friendly of the two.

Angels and devils

Four butterflies emerged from chrysalids today. They like to eat honesty apparently, so we are searching the local garden shops so we can plant some in the garden. The chrysalids of this butterfly look so much like thorns you have to look very closely to see them.

We also discovered that one of the scorpions had eaten the other! We're not sure if it was the male or the female that ate the other - it the was the biggest of the two. Still, I won't have to feed it for a while.

We also had an escapee. A beetle discovered a gap in the wire mesh of its vivarium, and was taking a stroll along the top. It was easily coaxed into a small net and back into its home.

Busy...

We are very busy. We had a trip to Lyon to buy insects last weekend. We got 10 beetles of various sizes and colours, 3 sweet faced phasmes, two giant millipedes, a couple of shy scorpions, a large Chilean tarantula, some large creepy roaches, some butterfly chrysalids pretending to be thorns and some very active and hungry caterpillars. At the same time the work on the house is progressing. Regine's brother is managing the work - we should soon have an office space and a couple of bedrooms with showers for guests.

And then there is the garden and the honey potting, and the shop and the museum... And nothing quite works the way it should... But its really quite a wonderful place to live!

Intrigue in the honey world...

Not a new story, but interesting nonetheless: http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1265467,00.html

Arrived

We have arrived. Its still our first week at La Cite des Insectes. We are overwhelmed by the beauty of our surroundings and by the amount of work we have to do to make this place ready for opening in April.

Our journey here was more eventful that we would have liked. We had a snow storm and a tempest. We got lost going round Paris, found many interesting corners of Versaille. Later, my van lost power and started drinking fuel like global warming was a myth, and I had to take the next exit to find a petrol station. It was the middle of nowhere, and Regine (following behind in the second van) started flashing her headlights because she thought I'd lost my marbles. We found a petrol station and a small restaurant - special. The whole journey from Calais to La Cite took from 8:30am until midnight.

Insects in the news

A biodiversity crisis indicated by UK moths in decline

The frog and the mosquito

Ants teach each other a lesson

Could the decline in British sparrows be because of a lack of spiders (spiders are not insects, but you knew that)? Why the scarcity of spiders?

... and a story of termites being spread around in garden mulch (more a rumour than news, but interesting).

Our new website

Our website is live at last.

Its just over a week before we leave for France. The contents of the flat are gradually disappearing into boxes - all due to the heroic efforts of Regine. I've packed a box and a half so far - Regine has packed nearly 70!

Next week we pick up two large vans from Calais, bring them back to London and fill them up. We will have two friends and a couple of 'man with van' people (only without their van).

The Countdown Begins

We have arranged our bank loans, our London flat is sold (we exchanged contracts yesterday) and I have handed in my notice at work. There are five weeks before we move.

We are moving from a flat in London (West Hampstead, Camden) to a farm house in the Limousin, France.

We will be running "La Cité des Insectes", a museum of insects. We will also invite groups (with or without teacher) to share this beautiful part of the world. We hope to bring groups wishing to participate in creative activities (performance, music, art, sculpture), as well as people interested in walking and learning more about the coutryside and some of the local wildlife.

Eating Insects

I recently noticed a few web sites selling edible insects. Is it a passing fad, or a trend which will become mainstream?

I used to be a vegetarian, and still eat very little meat, so the thought of eating an insect is not much stranger than eating any meat. After all we eat shrimps - not that far removed from insects (external skeleton, lots of legs).

First Post

Just to see how it looks.