Garden friends that need your help.

Interesting facts: if our native UK bees die out we will lose a third of our diet; to make 1lb of honey, a bee has to fly 55,000 miles; Almond trees solely rely on bee pollination;

Bees are essential in pollinating the crops that form our food and the wild plants that grow across the country provide food for much of our wildlife; without bees, the very fabric of our environment will start to change.

There are 25,000 species of bees worldwide; in the UK we hold around 250 species of bees, but it thought that this figure is diminishing. Over the 50 years the numbers of bee colonies have declined, but it’s not all bad news –

In 2013, over 29,000 beekeepers managing around 126,000 colonies were registered in England on the National Bee Unit’s Bee Base database, compared with 15,000 beekeepers managing just under 80,000 colonies in 2008.

What can you do to help save our bees? Let’s have a look at some simple ideas:

Plant the right plant

Bees like certain plants better than others – sense the low buzz when standing next to a flowering Abelia or Mahonia. Cornflowers, Sedum, sunflowers and a good garden wild flower mixture are also popular with bees, and they are also partial to poppies and flowering fruit trees. Read more here.

Insecticides

Among the many suggestions is the belief that they have been affected by insecticides. We should be wary of any casual use of pesticides in gardens – it can also affect birds and other wild animals.

Become a bee-keeper and join a Beekeeping Association – BBKA

More and more people are turning to the joys of bee keeping and installing their own hives in gardens across the UK. This is a pastime which offers great enjoyment for those who love nature & the outdoors – the opportunity to make new friends and remember the benefits of honey bees – you get natural honey!

Put up a bee house

If a hive is not for you there are ways to build ‘bee houses’ that offer refuge for bees and hibernation spots for the winter months. You can buy these at garden centres, or build one yourself.

Learn more about bees

Rather than being concerned by a buzzing sound close by, you should begin to see bees as an essential part of the overall fabric of life. These beautiful and very wonderful creatures live an interesting and structured life and left to their own devices, are harmless to us.

Learn more about the life of bees

A colony is a community and each bee has a role to fulfil from the queen down to young bees, nursery bees, wax builders, worker bees, guard bees, foragers and drones. The colonies can contain up to 60,000 bees with one queen, male drones and female worker bees. The life of a forager can be as short as 21 days in the summer but will live through the winter hibernation.

Save our bees

The plight of our bees is not the first thing that comes to mind when you think of a natural crisis, but the continual decline of bees worldwide will affect us all in some form.

Charity Work – we have always supported Bees for Development who have championed sustainable beekeeping for bees and people in fight against poverty. 10 pence is donated to the cause on each jar. Check out their website below; they have an auction for good causes in Marlborough House in Pall Mall – 12^th June 2019