Grow more food!Growing food is great for us and great for bees. The general term ‘bees’ covers three types of bee that will visit your garden; the bumble, the solitary, and the honey bee. Some solitary bees are only 5mm in size, while there is no mistaking a large fluffy bumble bee. The only two things bees eat are pollen and nectar, both from flowers. Your city balcony, garden, or allotment plot can provide vital food for you, while also feeding insects. Plants from the bean and pea family for example, need pollination, as well as certain fruiting trees, bushes and many herbs. Leaving some plants to go to seed will also let them enter a flowering stage, so don’t be too quick to clear plots of overgrown salad plants and brassicas, such as broccoli and cabbage. Your garden may also be visited by hoverflies and bee flies, which mimic bees and are also important pollinators.
Understanding the many beneficial insects that visit your garden is a good step towards being sympathetic to these vital creatures, so we are encouraging people to get growing. Follow the link to capitalgrowth.org/ and sign up for support to become a Capital Growth food-growing space, and get information on growing food.
The bumble bee conservation trust has well illustrated pages showing the types of bumble bees that will visit your garden.
For information and images of solitary bees visit Insectpix.
Plant bee-friendly plants! London has over 2,500 registered bee hives, so you are never far from a honey bee. A bee-friendly plant can be something flowering in a window box, a fruit tree in the garden, or allowing wild plants (weeds in other words) to grow where you can. It all helps the great variety of bees in cities, from honey bees, to bumble bees, and the many tiny solitary bees. These small spaces outside our homes and in our gardens, when combined together, form an important environment for honey bees to forage (i.e. feed) in, particularly in an urban environment.
If you have a garden then you can attract honey bees by planting native plants such as honeysuckle, wild roses, lavender, foxgloves, hollyhocks, clematis and hydrangeas. Planting fruit, vegetables and herbs also attracts foraging honey bees looking for food. Thinking seasonally also helps, as many bees need forage in early spring up to late summer. Growing nectar rich plants such as red clover, knapweed, and foxgloves, also helps. For examples for bee-friendly seasonal planting see our pages from London’s beekeepers. Also, visit Garden Oranic Flowers for the Wildlife Garden and Gardeners World Plants for Bees.
English Nature also provides a handy search engine, with images to help identify many of the beneficial insects, such as drone flies and solitary wasps such as the mournful wasp which is harmless.
Buy bee-friendly foodBuying something organic, we help support a farming system that uses fewer pesticides and therefore helps create a better environment for our rural bees and other wildlife. Organic farmland creates a healthy environment for honey bees, thus improving their health and the quality of the food crops that they pollinate. Try to buy organic produce where possible, especially if it is produced locally or in the UK. Moving away from farming systems that rely on pesticides and synthetic fertilizers also helps promote farming that relies less on fluctuating oil prices, moving us towards a more sustainable food system. For details on organic food and farming please visit Why I love Organic.
While the beekeeper keeps the bees, it is Londoners that feed the bees. If you want organic local honey in London then you need to help your local beekeeper and bees by gardening without pesticides and herbicides. Gardens and allotments are vital to bees as they make up around one-fifth of London’s open spaces. The Soil Association writes that "Neonicotinoid pesticides have been linked to the dramatic collapse in bee numbers over the last decade ... and many domestic gardening products on sale in hardware stores and garden centres contain these chemicals." Not spraying pesticides (including weed killers) particularly while a plant is flowering helps the nectar hungry bee and is a more efficient use of any pesticides you do use. Also using chemicals after dusk or during the autumn reduces the risk bees feeding on poisons. Of course not using pesticides at all is even safer! Visit the Soil Association website for details of domestic pesticides.
Luckily there are many alternatives to pesticides, which use long established practices to control pests. These techniques, alongside composting and caring for the soil for example, form a set of procedures that are safe and that we can understand, unlike the long list of chemicals and warnings on most pesticide products.
For a wide range of reasons – including the health of bees and other wildlife – organic gardens are preferable. Plenty of help and advice is available, from charities like Garden Organic, and take a look at Companion Planting
The Pesticide Action Network is another charity that works to eliminate the dangers of toxic pesticides and their website lists many alternatives to chemical treatments for pests.
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