The United Kingdom is home to around 270 species of bee, the great majority of them solitary rather than living in hives. Add hoverflies, whose larvae often munch their way through aphids, and you have a workforce worth looking after. Gardens now cover a larger area of Britain than our nature reserves, so what you do with your patch — however small — genuinely counts.
A bee needs four things: nectar, pollen, water and shelter, plus a landscape free of poisons. Get those right and you will be astonished at what turns up between April and September.
Plant breeding has given us magnificent doubles, but many of them are useless to pollinators. In a double flower, the stamens and nectaries have been converted into extra petals, so the bee arrives to find a pretty, scented cupboard with nothing inside. A pom-pom dahlia or a fully double rose may look splendid, but a bee will move on hungry.
Choose open, single-flowered varieties instead. Look for a visible ring of stamens and you will rarely go wrong.
Plant in generous drifts rather than scattering single specimens. A square metre of catmint will draw far more bees than the same plants dotted along a border, simply because the scent and colour register as a landmark worth visiting.
The colony in a bumblebee nest needs food from early spring, when queens emerge, right through to autumn, when new queens must fatten up before hibernation. A garden that peaks in July leaves them short at both ends of the year.
Deadhead the vigorous ones to keep the flowers coming, but leave a few seed heads standing for the birds. And do resist the urge to cut everything back in October — hollow stems and seed heads are winter accommodation.
Bees drink, and they also carry water back to cool the nest on hot days. A deep bird bath is a drowning risk, so offer something shallow instead: a saucer, a plant-pot base or a low dish set among the border, with pebbles or marbles piled inside to give safe landing platforms.
Refresh it daily in warm weather, site it in dappled shade and keep it close to the ground. Bees will also take moisture from damp soil and wet compost, so a freshly watered pot is doing double duty. If you have room, a shallow pebble-edged pond with gently sloping sides is one of the best wildlife features you can add.
Insecticides cannot tell a pest from a pollinator. Even products marketed as natural or organic, such as pyrethrum sprays, are harmful to bees, and the residue lingers on open flowers. Weedkillers are just as damaging in a quieter way, because dandelions, clover and daisies are some of the earliest and most reliable nectar sources in a British lawn.
If you must treat something, spray in the evening when bees are not flying, on a still day, and never onto a plant in flower. Better still, work with the garden: a strong colony of hoverflies and ladybirds will deal with most aphids if you give them somewhere to live and stop knocking them back.
Swap slug pellets for barriers, nematodes or an evening torchlit patrol. Slug pellets are a particular problem because they are eaten by ground beetles, hedgehogs and birds, all of which help keep the balance.
Around seven in ten of our solitary bees nest in the ground, so a patch of bare, sunny, light soil — a south-facing bank or a strip beside the path — is a genuine asset. Try not to mulch every inch of the garden. Add a log pile in shade, leave some long grass over winter, and let a corner go a little unkempt.
If you buy or build a bee hotel, choose one made from a solid block drilled with smooth holes between 2mm and 10mm across and 10–15cm deep, mounted facing south at about chest height. Avoid the decorative sort filled with pine cones or glass tubes, which harbour damp and disease. A simple bundle of hollow canes in an old tin does the job just as well.
Finally, talk to your neighbours. A bee-friendly garden joined to the next one along becomes a corridor rather than an island, and that is when a street really starts to hum.
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