Provide a friendly home for bees and create a safe haven for them!
Bees are an essential part of our ecosystem, and they need our help. By creating a safe haven for them, we can ensure they thrive in our environment and continue to provide valuable services like pollination of food crops. Help save the bees today – create your own haven with our handy tips:
Grow a variety of flowers
Different bee groups visit different flowers, because they all have different tongue lengths! So growing a wide selection of flower shapes and sizes will help to feed the greatest amount of bees.
Grow small flowers like nectar-rich Clover or Self Heal, along with large open-faced flowers like Oxeye Daisy and Dandelion.
Provide a fabulous feast for bees by joining in with #NoMowMay and not mowing the lawn in May. Continue by not mowing through summer, or cutting your lawn every 6 weeks, which allows lawn flowers like White Clover to bloom, which provide masses of nectar to feed the bees.
Bumblebees love big tubular flowers, like foxglove, that they can crawl into. Willowherbs are great for forage and their leaves may be used by leaf-cutter bees.
Cup shaped flowers like single roses, poppies and buttercups are brilliant for providing protein-rich pollen, that bees need for feeding their young. Watch as bumblebees emit a high-pitched buzz inside the flower cup to dislodge the pollen, this is called ‘buzz-pollination’!
Create habitats
Smaller bumblebees often make a nest in tussocky grass or a leaf-pile, which is why we advocate not being too tidy in the garden. That wild corner could be a safe haven for these gentle bees.
Mason bees like to burrow into soft clay, sand or loose soil banks to make the cells in which they lay their eggs.
Leaf-cutter bees uses tiny semi-circular segments of leaf to make a neat tube for their offspring. Rose, Lilac and Honeysuckle leaves are all favourites and will provide your garden with beautiful fragrance.
Some solitary bees look for hollow or pithy dry stems to repurose as homes for their babies. Add a bee hotel or bee brick to a sunny wall or fence, facing south or south east. Place it at least a metre off the ground, with a clear flight path to the entrance and make sure it is well sheltered from rain.
In hot weather, during the summertime, add a saucer of fresh water and pebbles, for bees to balance on, whilst they take a drink.
We hope you enjoy making your garden, or space, a little more bee-friendly.
If you have any queries or questions we are always happy to chat at Seedball HQ. Give us a call or drop us an email or DM. x
