Attract these superstars to your garden with some bee-friendly plants
There has been a lot of concern in recent years about falling bee numbers & rightly so. Not only do they buzz around our gardens but they buzz around the crops we eat too. Whilst they are collecting nectar & pollen for their hives they are also pollinating & cross pollinating the plants, trees & shrubs they visit. Without pollination the plant will not produce its fruit whether this is an apple or a head of corn & only 10% of flowering plants are pollinated without ‘animal’ assistance. If you look at some of our bee facts below you will realise that the reduction in bee numbers may have dire consequences to our future crop production.
Honey bees are suffering the most with a number of possible problems facing them including the Varroa parasitic mite, disease, pesticides & poor beehive management overwinter. The honey bees stay active in the hive all winter keeping the temperature adjusted & the hive safe, totally reliant on the stores of honey they have built up over the year. Bumblebees & solitary bees are not affected by the Varroa mite but are suffering from a combination of a lack of suitable flowers & loss of habitat in which to nest & overwinter. They are choosier about the flowers they will visit, often preferring wild flowers to garden plants & they need overwintering & nesting sites in suitable locations. Of the Bumblebees it is only the queen that overwinters & after mating in the autumn she hibernates until spring. Then she needs to find a suitable nesting site, collect enough pollen & make enough honey to lay her eggs & feed herself until they hatch. Then she spends the year laying eggs, producing workers then finally drones & queens to carry on the cycle through to the following year.
How to Help With the Bee Population
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Join your local beekeeping association & support local beekeepers by buying their honey & offering them somewhere to site their hive if you have a local wildflower meadow. Even start beekeeping yourself! - Grow native wild flowers and other bee friendly plants in the garden (See our planting plan below). Try to use pesticides sparingly & if you use them spray in the evening when the temperatures are lower & the bees less active.
- Provide suitable nesting sites in the garden. Bumblebees & some solitary bees will nest down mouse holes or dig their own tunnels in soil or short grass so leave a quiet area of the garden untouched. Other solitary bees will nest in hollow stems & holes - you can make your own nest box for them from canes & drilled pieces of wood with holes up to 8mm (0.3”) wide positioned in a sheltered, sunny spot.
Some Interesting Bee Facts
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Bees are responsible for pollinating 33% of the crops we eat. - The annual economic contribution that bee pollination makes to agriculture in this country is £165 million.
- A bee will visit between 50-100 flowers during one trip.
- Bees fly at an average speed of 20mph, in flight a bee beats its wings around a 180 times per minute.
- Honey bees sleep and can be found catching a snooze on a flower.
- A colony consists of 20,000-60,000 honey bees and one queen bee.
- A queen bee can lay up to 2,000 eggs a day.
- A queen honey bee can control the colony by producing a unique odour or pheromone. This unique smell helps to identify colony members and stops female works becoming fertile and breeding.
- Worker honey bees are female. They live for 6-8weeks and do all the work.
- The male honey bees are called drones. They don’t do any work as such; their male role is to reproduce. They have no stinger.
- Honey bees communicate with one another by dancing. This special waggle dance tells other worker bees the location of resources such as water or good forage.
- Bees can detect and use gravity to navigate while in complete darkness within the hive.
- Bees can see ultraviolet light. Many flowers have patterns that are invisible to humans unless illuminated by UV.
- To collect a pound of honey a bee might have to fly a distance equivalent to twice around the world. This is likely to involve more than 10,000 flower visits on maybe 500 foraging trips.
- Bees are the only insect that produces food eaten by man.
- We produce only 20% of the honey we consume, the rest is imported.
Plants to Attract Bees into the Garden
This isn’t a complete list of plants that will attract bees but provides a choice depending on the space available in your garden or patio & the type of plants you like! Honey bees are active from late winter through to autumn so try to select a range of plants that flower at different times of year to provide a constant supply of nectar.
