By: Green Bee
Chatting

10 simple things we can do to help the bees

The destruction of green space or chemically rendering those spaces barren, devoid of flowers, is taking its toll on bee colonies around the world.

” Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s needs, but not every man’s greed.” Mahatma Ghandi

We can all do something and the help they need is pretty simple.

  1. Don’t use pesticides or chemical weed killer. These are wiping out thousands of bees every year.
  2. If you have lawn flowers like daisies or clover, let them flower before mowing the lawn. Bees love them and isn’t a meadow garden pretty before it gets too tall and straggly?
  3. Buy local, raw honey. Raw honey is becoming more readily available from farmers’ markets than ever. This is great for your own health, too, as it won’t have been treated with chemicals.
  4. Plant flowers in groupings. Bees like to focus on one family of flowers at a time. Leave an area of the garden to grow a bit wild. There are ground-nesting bees, like Mason bees, that will use it for their homes.
  5. Plan your garden so that you have something in flower all year round. but avoid hybrid flowers that are often sterile and have no pollen.
  6. Plant a tree. Tree blossom is a useful source of pollen, too.
  7. Make them a little rock pool bath. Get a small dish, fill it with water and add lots of stepping stone pebbles. The bees will be delighted to take a break and have a refreshing drink of water before flying off to carry on their foraging and gathering duties.
  8. Get kids interested. Remember that great quote that nobody seems to know who to attribute it to? ‘We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children’. Teach children to love their world and respect all life upon it.
  9. Put up bee hotels on a south-facing wall. Garden centres now stock them regularly.
  10. Sponsor a bee! 🙂 Join a wildlife trust that supports bees, eg, https://iwt.ie/people-for-bees/ or https://pollinators.ie/. There are many organisations around the world all taking up the challenge of saving our bee colonies.

I love to see the garden full of colour and buzz with the sound of happy bees going about their day.

No idea what the plant is; it grows like billy-o and the bees love it. I have several bushes in my garden and the bees were all over it when I took this shot.
Hover flies like it, too… but this bee, with her bright orange shopping bags, has spotted a couple of unattended flowers to go see.
French lavender is a hit
Those orange pollen baskets are bulging.
They zip from one flower to the next and you have to get a bit snap happy to try and get a good shot.
I have two honeysuckle plants; one at each end of the garden. When they’re in bloom, they’re always full of bees. Honeysuckle attracts lots of bees.
Big bees and little bees. This is a little bee, possibly a Mason bee (?). I’m no expert, but love having them in my garden and we all benefit from their activity as the planet’s pollinators.
I’m working on a paper cut Green Bee logo for my blog.

Help the bees. Bee happy 🙂