To be worried that I haven’t seen any insects.

[Viscoelasticity]

I live in the Welsh countryside. It’s 11pm and I’ve been sitting in my living room with two windows wide open and the lamps on for the past 4 hours. There are no insects in my house. No moths or daddy long legs fluttering around my lampshades. Where are they?

I have seen no butterflies this year. No ladybirds. No wasps. No ants. About 3 bumble bees, and one earwig. Very few spiders.

I never thought I’d miss insects, but I do, and I am worried. What will the birds and the frogs eat? Nature is dying 😢

No shortageof blackfly on my broad beans. No slugs or snails, no butterflies or bumblebees. My clematis and climbing hydrangea haven’t bothered flowering at all. My lupins have not flowered.its a weird year for growing.

Come to Hampshire and have some of ours 😀

No shortage here, plus we have bats in the gables, and seemingly happy swallows & swifts, so I guess they have enough to eat. We are on chalk grassland, mostly pasture and arable farming, with mixed woodland. Plenty of hornets this year.

Maybe the very wet spring has impacted your local flora and fauna.

They're all in my garden and bungalow that's why!! Countless wood lice in the garden. About 5 spiders inside. 3 in the bathroom one of which I had to rescue out of the bath before turning the shower on. A couple in my bedroom. No idea where they've gone they're free to just scuttle around wherever they please. Seen some gorgeous cucumber spiders in the garden well making themselves at home in the pegs on the washing line. Rescued 3 slugs that ended up inside. Only seen a couple of bees but I don't have any flowers in the garden yet. Or should u day I don't now I've de weeded it all. There was one tiny little bee buzzing in and out of a few flowers the other day but that soon flew off.

Loads here. Particularly ladybirds 🐞 far SW coast. Our usual swallows are back and we are seeing the return of skylarks.

I live in another country, but we haven't had bees for a couple of years due to a mite problem. All the beekeepers had to euthanise their bees in an attempt to control the mite. This meant, though, the disappearance of bees from gardens. I've probably spotted three or four bees in the last three years.

I'm not suggesting this is happening where you are - if it was, you would have heard about it by now!

I was thinking about this over the last few days as I’ve noticed the same. I’ve seen a couple of Cinnabar moths and some bumble bees but no butterflies or anything else.

Things like 'no mow May' are trying to help this

Essex coast and I have more sodding spiders and moths in the house and garden in the last couple of weeks than I've previously had in a full year in all the time I've lived here. Despite having plug in repellents which have worked wonders for the last five years or so, the little buggers are all over the place at the moment. And I'm mostly working elsewhere during the days and evenings so it's not even WFH and noticing it more!

Plenty of snails and slugs too - they get forcibly ejected from the house if they venture in attached to a kitten 😂 getting slightly better at spiders and moving them rather than killing them. Fair few flies too, they get zapped sadly, and the odd daddy long legs if I forget to put the mesh screen on the window before putting the lights on. And there are approximately a trillion ants trying to dig up my patio at any given time 🤷‍♀️

So in complete contrast to you I feel like I'm trying to defend myself against an influx of invertebrates way too early in the year - September is when I am mentally prepared for bloody spiders 😭

But I have noticed the bees are very late out this year and there don't seem to be so many of them :(

They're all here with me. I have a very high body temperature so they are attracted to that.

Plenty of spiders, flies, woodlice and bloody midges.

Decent amount of bumblebees, and we have a tree in our overgrown back garden that honeybees seem to love.

Not one butterfly or moth.

In South Wales.

The flying insect population has absolutely plummeted since the 70s in the UK for multiple reasons including habitat loss and pesticide use.
I have a theory about this year though. Given how we're suddenly receiving reports from all of the country that no one is seeing butterflies and bees, I believe it must be weather related. Otherwise the reports would be much more patchy.

The question is, can an already precarious population come back from a year like this? I'm worried that there will be no more butterflies and bees anymore, except honey bees which are farmed (and even they are finding things increasingly difficult).

They are biting me every night. I'll tell them to head to Wales.

The extremely wet spring is a partial contributor to this. It then feeds over to a decline in insect eating garden birds. Very sad.

I should think the long, wet, cold winter and spring had an impact.

Plenty of bug life on the Med where I've just been for a couple of months.

I'm in Kent. My garden is usually full of insects but I've had nothing.

Its packed with insect friendly areas and plants and yet nothing.

Was in Surrey last week - nothing much - a few dark coloured butterflies. The roses are out - normally there would be a constant hum in the background on warm days but nothing.

That's strange and unsettling. It must be variable because we had loads of ladybirds a few weeks ago - dozens in the house for ages. We get a lot of moths and spiders as well. We seem to get butterflies on the buddleia.
However, that's a worrying picture because of climate change and other human activity.

Slugs and snails this year. My garden is normally full of bees and butterflies….this year hardly any. North west and it’s been cold and damp and windy for 12 months which probably hasn’t helped.

the coenothus when it was out hummed with bees so that gave me hope!

seen maybe 3 ladybirds.

I'm in NW England and I've had absolutely loads of insects in my wild garden the last few weeks. A few different kinds of bumblebees and solitary bees, honeybees, loads of different kinds of hoverflies, ladybirds, damselflies, dragonflies, a few moths, beetles, etc etc. Not that many butterflies yet but up here my buddleia is only just starting to flower now, so I'm hoping to see more soon. I read that 2022 was a bad year for butterflies but 2023 was much better (despite the wet July and August), and that was exactly my own experience in my garden too. I'm wondering if this year isn't a great one for butterflies either but it's a bit early to say for sure.

I do share the OP's and PPs' concern about the decline in insects in the last few years and decades, hence having a wild untidy garden. Do you have a pond of any kind, OP? Even creating a tiny one in a bowl might make all the difference to the numbers of insects you see.

It's almost certainly down to the farmers. There are far more birds and insects where I live (Bedfordshire - town) than where my parents live (Lincolnshire - near farmland).

One good thing Labour propose, unlike the Conservatives will be banning the use of strong pesticides that kill bees.

@AllPrincessAnneshorses the OP isn't catastrophising, she's objectively right about the sharp decline in insect populations. You sound incredibly ignorant.

I regularly walk our dogs through a huge field full of clovers and birds foot trefoil and buttercup and usually it's buzzing with bees , butterflies and hoverflies.This year nothing.It's really concerning.Nearby is a football academy and I've seen them spraying the car park boundaries with a ghostbuster sized backpack full of weedkiller. That can't help.
And noticeably less insects in my own garden which is full of pollinating plants and has a pond and scruffy area too.I think the cold wet spring hasn't helped. And multiple housing developments grubbing up fields in the area.It's so depressing.

Definitely a decline here, I live beside a river with woodland and farmland and there is a noticeable difference compared to a few years ago. Thirty odd years ago we had that many house martins nesting that they were a nuisance, one even nested on an open window and we had at least five nests every year. Last year and this year not a single bird has appeared. There are very few bees and only the odd butterfly in my well planted garden. I used to enjoy listening to the buzzing bees when I sat in the garden, nothing this year though.

It's such a relief to hear they are thriving elsewhere.

I am doing all the right things, but the decline is massive. Hopefully they will be able to spread out from the places they've survived.

I'm feeding birds generously to save a few insects too! 😁