There are so many good reasons to attract bees into your garden as they are so vital to the health of agriculture and natural ecosystems.
It's easy to feel overwhelmed but there are lots of ways we can all help bees, here's how to attract more bees into your garden:
3. Leave Part of Your Garden Alone.
Finally, leave the bees in peace.
Unfortunately, they are becoming rarer due to a variety of reasons.
Read on to find out what we can all do to help the bees, and how to attract more bees into your garden.
Why Bees Are So Important to the Ecosystem and to Humans
Ecosystems are a complex series of interconnected life forms that depend upon each other.
Ecosystems exist in a state of balance and when one component is affected, the whole system is thrown off.
Bees are an integral part of a healthy ecosystem, and they are crucial for pollination ensuring we have crops.
Bees are an integral part of a healthy ecosystem, and they are crucial for pollination ensuring we have crops.
But bees are struggling to survive. Our use of chemicals and pesticides is one of the main reasons.
Loss of habitat and food sources also factor, so try creating a bee habitat in your garden.
Read on to find out why bees are important and how to sttract more bees into your garden.
Why Bees Are Important
Bees' role as pollinators is so crucial to our food supply.
Bees' role as pollinators is so crucial to our food supply.
In fact, they pollinate more than three quarters of our flowering crops.
If flowers are not pollinated, they will not bear fruit.
That means that bees are responsible for wild and domestic fruit, vegetables and nuts.
Most of our most popular everyday crops depend on bees to fertilize the flowers so that fruit will develop.
When a bee gets nectar from a flower, it gets coated in pollen.
The bee then carries this pollen to another flower, fertilizing it and causing the flower to develop into a fruit.
Without pollination, many flowering crops would not yield fruit.
It has been said that, without bees, humans would have to survive on bread and water!
It has been said that, without bees, humans would have to survive on bread and water!
Don't forget your clothes. About 80 percent of all cotton crops are pollinated by honeybees.
It's also worth noting that cotton is one of the most heavily-sprayed crops with regard to pesticides, the enemy of bees.
You can help combat this by buying organic cotton.
Bees' pollination efforts are responsible for a wide diversity of wild flowers, too.
Bees' pollination efforts are responsible for a wide diversity of wild flowers, too.
In fact, if bees did not pollinate in the wild, some vegetation would become extinct, leaving space for invasive, problematic species to take over.
Animals that eat the extinct vegetation would then die off, followed by the carnivorous animals that eat the herbivores.
When one part of an ecosystem suffers it becomes a chain reaction so it's crucial that we all do everything we can for bees.
Bees and Kids
Encourage your kids to love bees and not to be afraid of them.
Help them by picking up any exhausted or hurt bees you see on the ground.
Carry a little jar of sugar water with you everywhere and a syringe to offer some to any struggling bees, or simply pick them up and put them on a flower so they can get the sugar and recover.
Having bees in your garden is also a great educational opportunity for kids, check out these ideas for learning and having fun:
How to Attract Bees Into Your Garden
It's easy to feel overwhelmed but there are lots of ways we can all help bees, here's how to attract more bees into your garden:
1. Add Bee-Friendly Plants
You can help by planting lots of bee-friendly, flowering plants, trees and shrubs in your garden, such as:
- Boxwood (Tiny blooms hardly discernable to humans, but bees will fill a blooming boxwood in May.)
- Lavender
- Salvia
- Shrub roses
- Bee balm or bergamot
- Budleia (Butterfly bush)
- Lemon balm
- Oregano
- Purple coneflower
- Strawberries
- Blackberries
- Fruit trees
Native plants are especially beneficial to local bees, so ask at your local garden centre.
Dependent on where you live, check out the best plants for bees in your US state and habitat or the best plants for bees in the UK or the best plants for bees Australia.
Apologies if we haven't covered your country but a quick Google search will give you the 'best bee-friendly plants for my area'.
2. Ditch the Chemicals
Do not use insecticides or pesticides in your garden.
Bees are extremely vulnerable to these substances so do not use any chemical pesticides or fungicides in your garden or your yard at all.
3. Leave Part of Your Garden Alone.
Create a wildflower garden. You can do this for little or no money. Create a dead hedge and leave the grass to grow.
Let the wildflowers and grasses take over a segment of your garden. Fence it off if you like.
If it bothers you to have this unkempt area of your garden, consider locating this free-form habitat in another area of your property.
If you have moany neighbours, you can even put up a whimsical sign that designates the ragged area as belonging to the bees.
4. Have a Water Source in Your Garden.
Bees need water, too, and are attracted to areas where it is available.
Make sure the water source has large pebbles or rocks sticking up at intervals so that bees can land on them, and crawl up and out of the water if they fall in.
If your water feature is a pond of some sort, put aquatic plants on the surface for the bees to alight on.
5. Provide Shelter
Provide shelter for bees to spend the winter.
They like leaf litter and spaces between logs and boards. Get the kids to make a bug hotel.
They also like to huddle underneath overturned wooden boards.
Set up a beehive if you really want to get bees into your garden.
Choose a style that works well for your garden, and do some research to find out how it works.
Finally, leave the bees in peace.
And if we are all helping the bees maybe we can help their dwindling populations to recover.
You and your kids can observe them, but try to do so without disturbing them.
Grab this cute bee activity pack to get your kids engaged with the bees in your garden:
More tips:
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