Why Should We Protect Bees?
Bees are a part of our landscapes and gardens , we know what they are and we have sex they make honey , but our bees are in danger of evaporate due to home ground devastation , chemicals and disease .
Without bees the human race will struggle to reap enough food . That sound dramatic but our pollinator are responsible for the fruiting of our harvest . In forgetful , we have to change bee fortunes not only for their sake but for our own .
Bee numbers are a good meter reading of environmental health . Like our nativehedgehogsandbutterflies , they are in declineand this points to environmental problem – but there are ways you could help vacate their destiny .
The absolute majority of people know bee make dearest and they sting , but there is so much more to this fascinating creature – did you know they have five eyes?Two received single and then three on top of their head , and were you aware there are hundreds of dissimilar types in the UK alone ?
Here ’s the ultimate guide to bees and how we can help them hold out .
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What Bees Live in the UK?
It ’s less common now than 50 years ago , but most of us are acquainted with the buzzing bee busily nestle inside our flower . There are hundreds ofdifferent types , but for ease its best to relegate them as sole and societal bees .
Social bees such as Apis mellifera last in nettle rash and nests – up to 50,000 of them can live together in a hierarchy of command . The bumblebee is also a social type , but chooses a small group of friends – around 50 - 150 . Social bees are ruled by a queen mole rat . This Danaus plexippus is responsible for all egg egg laying , the rest collect food , keep the hives clean and fecundate the queen .
Social bee type admit :
There are a number of bumblebee including the red - tailed , blank - tailed , tree , small garden and early bumble bees . They are the loud , downy bees that look utterly strokeable , and make a thud against your windowpanes . Bumblebees have the longest tongue of all UK bees reaching just over 2 cm at full stretch . The old English name for a Bumblebee is a Dumbledore just in case you ever enquire where JK Rowling draw the name .
Honeybees are slight , and they have a striped golden body , regrettably there are few violent colonies left in the UK , but bee - steward tend honeybeesin artificial hives . They are more common than bumblebees , often feeding on flowers such as lavender , yield flower and oilseed ravishment .
Carders are all chocolate-brown bee ranging from light Orange River to a yellowy brown . They are found in most gardens and enjoy taking ambrosia from weeds such as dandelion and all in nettle .
Solitary bees live alone in burrow or burrows . This is the type you might incur in yourbee hotel . They do n’t make beloved or wax , and feed their larvae with a mix of pollen and nectar .
Solitary bee types include :
Mason bees live in the brickwork of theater , Sir Henry Joseph Wood , knockout numb bloom stalks , and walls . They have quite dark typeface , with a cryptical ginger torso , and a squarer head than other bees . They collect building stuff such as clay to construct a small home in masonry work gaps .
Mining bees are the bee that leave little lot of ground on your lawn – these miniature volcanoes are the work of mining bees that nest in the ground . There are many different species , such as the ash-grey excavation bee , and they stray from dark fluffy Orange River to a pale fluffy lily-livered . Mining bees dwell in all environments crop from target to gardens often taking vantage of beetle tunnels .
Leafcutter bees are creditworthy for removing semi - circular sections of plant foliage . There are seven dissimilar type in the UK . They use cutting leaves to ramp up a nesting cell for a single larvae . They nest in beetle holes and need around 40 pieces of leafage to make their nursery .
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Where Do Bees Live?
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reckon on the mintage they live in nettle rash , in the earth , in tree trunks and in the bricks of your planetary house . If you recognize a turgid , frail - looking papery nest , it ’s likely to be a wasp nest – do not impact and keep your children and pet off .
If you are golden a solitary bee may take up residence in your bee hotel . See here for guidance onhow to construct your own bee and hemipterous insect hotel !
What Do Bees Eat?
Bees get all they want from flowers . Nectar provides carbohydrates and pollen provide protein . bee do n’t actually eat honey in summer , instead they save it for their larvae . remain honey is seal off with wax and leave to fermentation for use over winter when flush are dormant and ambrosia is in short supplying .
Do Bees Have Any Predators?
Bees are prey to a number of predators . doll will take bee on the annex or as they hustle inside a flower . Spiders will catch bees in a web and the Cancer spider , a fertile hunter , is a master of stealth , changing vividness to match the heyday environs before pouncing on an unsuspecting bee .
cat and dogs pour down bee , often with consequential vet misstep , and many bee collide with car . We kill bees too with garden pesticides , a lack of flush and but squashing them because we are afraid .
The Asiatic hornet ( Vespa velutina ) is a particularly successful piranha of honey bees . They will look outdoors hive to kill and collect bees as they turn back . It ’s not aboriginal to the UK but has been accidently introduced to France and is working its way across Europe . The Asian Hornet can pass over out entire colonies of honeybees .
Disease is also rife in bees , despite their hives having antibacterial and fungicidal properties . In particular the Varroa mite is of concern to bee - keeper . It suckle the stock of bees spit contagion into their physical structure , and sneaks into developing pupae inside hives and burrow . Varroa is a actual threat to the bee population .
What’s the Difference Between Bees and Wasps?
Many people be given to panic when they hear a bombilation , but it ’s easy to say the dispute between a bee and a wasp .
The main difference is that a bee will not gravel trying to deplete your food . It needs nectar , not your apple or ice - ointment , but WASP are draw in to sweet food . Bees also tend to have downlike , wide of the mark bodies with hirsute legs whereas WASP are svelte and have thin waists .
There are two types of wasp in the UK – the common wasp and the German white Anglo-Saxon Protestant . They both have long , contraband and scandalmongering body that evaluate 12 - 15 millimetre . Bees are usually more orange in colour .
Because bee have robust , haired eubstance with flat rear legs , and white Anglo-Saxon Protestant are slender some family line wasps as fast sports cars and a bee is the comfy Volvo .
And the nest ?
It ’s rarified if not impossible to locate a wild bee nest now , but it would have wax electric cell and bee larvae stacked in row . A wasp nest is papery , big and rounded . They nuzzle in trees , loft , and morose places . Both case of nest will thrum with activity and should not be poke or messed about with .
There ’s another stripy louse to look out for too – if you spot what looks like a wingless wasp sip nectar- that ’s a pollinating hoverfly .
Hoverflies are unsubdivided to identify because they do just that , they hover near a plant wave their wings so fast you ca n’t see or discover them . They have no sting and are totally harmless .
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Do Bees Hibernate?
Some do . Solitary bee tend to hibernate in their tunnel or nest , which is another rationality to keep those plant stalk up till spring – there may be a hibernate solitary bee fast asleep indoors .
Honey bee congregate together for affectionateness in the hive pickings turns to go on the exterior so all are heated up . They will eat summer - store dear supplies at this point .
humblebee tend to die off as the colder weather approaches , which is why we see them dead more often than others . The queen bumblebee will live nestled aside in land . If you disturb a large bumbler digging your garden in wintertime just defer and pass on it alone – it may well be a queen that ’s needed to bulge a newfangled dependency in natural spring .
How Bees Help the Garden
bee are an essential part of the nutrient chain pollinating a third of our solid food supply.70 plants in the UK need bee pollenation , and it is estimated bees are deserving £ 400 million per year to the food production industriousness . Because they pollinate our plants we are in problem without them .
Take your orchard apple tree tree diagram for example . You may have two pollinating partner , mean two unlike type of orchard apple tree tree diagram that need cross pollination to produce apples . It ’s the bees ( and other pollinator like butterflies and hoverflies ) that transport out your pollenation .
When they drink ambrosia from a blossom the pollen sticks to bee feet and their hairy , downlike dead body . Look close up at a bee imbibing , it wo n’t hurt you , and you ’ll see the pollen stuck to its physical structure . Pollen will also float forth as they move around on the flush .
plant and bees have co - evolve to avail this process , which is why it ’s such a tragedy we are wiping out our bee – they deserve better .
Bees are also part of the food chain for birds and other predators . Breaking the natural food mountain chain and lifecycles of our aboriginal creatures leads to environmental trouble .
What’s The Waggle Dance?
so as to discover the full pollen sources honey bees do a waggle dance . Yes , it ’s a wacky name , but the man who discovered it won a Nobel Prize .
The waggle dance is a satnav for bee . A honeybee will regress to the hive and perform the dancing to indicate directions to in effect nectar rootage . The canonic function is a physical body of eight and a assembly line . A long waggle means it ’s a far distance and their speed or angles indicate guidance . They will release a odour to help with directions too .
How Do Bees Make Honey and Beeswax?
Honey bees are the only bee that make wax and honey .
Honeybee spit are longsighted enough to attain inside a flower and sip out nectar . Extracted nectar is keep in a ‘ honey stomach’before they fly back to the nest to render their burden .
Other bees in the beehive take the nectar mouth to mouthpiece and enzymes transgress down sugar to make it less runny . It ’s then put in those awing hexagonal cellular phone where bees fan it with their wings so it cool down and solidifies .
Honeycombs are works of artistic production made by female worker bees that only be for approximately six weeks . From ten days former bees are able to make from wax which issue from wax secretory organ beneath their abdominal cavity .
Nectar stored in the honey venter mixes with enzymes to raise eccentric person of wax , which they manducate off to make mouldable , and tot to the honeycomb . honeycomb are made to house their immature – it ’s a crèche , nutrient storage area and the centre of the honeybee world .
What is The Queen Bee?
Social bees do not believe in democracy , instead they are ruled by a queen bee .
There is only one queen in a beehive – the other bees are drone and worker . The queen is responsible for laying eggs which turn into more proletarian , drones , and of course , the next queen .
Worker bees are always uninspired females – they pick the nance and feed her so she can keep laying eggs . Drones are manlike bee that fertilise the pansy .
The queen deplete honey and royal jelly all year around to keep up the protein levels required to set 2000 ballock a day . The queen bee is bigger , shiner and smoother than other bees and evenhandedly easy to recognise in the hive . She can live 5 - 7 yr , but become less productive as she years .
Without a queen the hive can not work properly , so if she go worker bees will directly begin feeding female larvae large amount of royal jelly so she develops into their new queen .
If you are enquire what royal jelly is – it ’s a secernment produced from the head of worker bees . All larvae eat some royal gelatin , the drones and workers get about three daytime in the developing larval stages , but the fresh queen larvae feast on purple gelatin until they are fully developed .
4 Things You Can Do to Help Bees
bee are dying out and the primary trouble is how our surround is alter .
There are less wildflowers than ever before due to caparison maturation and changes in farming practice , pesticide are a substantial job and bee disease too .
Here are 4 easy ways you’re able to help the bee out .
1. Grow Some Flowers
Pollen full-bodied flowers are essential to bees . raise open - headed flowers from early spring to former fall because doubled flowers are too tight and unmanageable for bee to get indoors . The best plants for our bees are aboriginal to the UK .
Some unspoiled choices are foxglove , comfrey , bluebell , knapweed , hellebore , Wiccan hazelnut , honeysuckle , buddleia , sedum , lavender , yield trees such as apple and pear , poppy , and hebe . wild flower are important too , in fact the rarer types of bee favor wild flower .
Do n’t forget vegetable . Bees will take nectar from broad bean and base runner beans – any flower veggie is attractive to them .
If you desire to encouragedeeply purring bumblebeeschoose deep flowers like foxglove because only bumble bees have tongue long enough to reach inside them .
The RHS have a Perfect for Pollinator recording label which is worth looking out for , and they are conducting test to see which flowers our pollinator prefer .
2.Don’t Use Pesticides
Chemicals are a substantial job for wildlife of all types . Chemical spray used to kill aphids and greenfly also kill bees . If you must apply them , do it at gloam when the bee have retired for the night . A resolution of citrus peel and H2O is often successful on aphidsand if you have lady birds these are voracious killers .
The chemical neonicotinoids ( thiacloprid and acetamiprid ) known as neonics are available at most garden centre of attention and are conceive to cause bees real problems .
On a wider exfoliation chemicals used in farming drill cause far-flung bee red . There are studies and arguments over whether farming manipulation of neonics are responsible for our bee red ink .
3.Retain Weeds
Bees loveweeds ! blowball in particular are adore by bumblebees and honeybees like clover flowers . Leave some for the bees by keeping a unwarranted patch in your garden .
4. Provide a Water Source
Not many of us think about bees needing a drink , but they do get hungry .
bee drown in deep , moth-eaten water but a great room to help them is by put out a terracotta dish fill up with pebble and water . Pebbles give bees and butterflies something to sit on and drink in safety . Bee baths need make full regularly as raging Dominicus can dry out them out within a day .
How to Feed and House a Bee
Bee houses we ’ve mentioned , but these do offer a safe topographic point for solitary bee to nestle .
Make one using a straight frame filled with hollow bamboo canes or buy one from a garden centre or online . Whichever you select needs to be adjust up correctly or you ’ll have a void sign forever .
Put your bee house in a south - facing lieu that is n’t in direct sunlight . It will require a roof so rain does n’t get in , and be bushel against a fence . Bee houses on a concatenation bit into tip tunnels , and no - one appreciates a draft on their back , not least bees .
you’re able to leave foresightful stalks , dry flower borders and dead wood around for other types of bee .
Alongside growing more flowers you may feed bee a boodle root . mingle a one-half and half intermixture of water with granulated sugar and pop it in your bee bath or in a saucer . Bees will alight for an zip filled drunkenness .
When To Rescue A Bee
Do n’t bee scared ( ! ) , bee are not belligerent fauna , they do sting when anguish , but this leads to their death so it ’s a last resort . A bee will walk over your hands and implements of war without sting you , but whacking it , screaming and infecting children with panic does no - one any party favor .
If you do n’t want the bee on you ( really you should be observe ) put your body part against efflorescence or verdure and it will walk away . And that bombination that so terrify people ? It ’s just their wing vibrating in the wind . When scared bees beat them more it ’s to judge and scare away predators .
If you do get stung put an meth face pack over the area and it ’ll go off . Interestingly , apiarist rarely get arthritis and cogitation are revealing bee spitefulness may be an effective treatment against rheumatism and figure of arthritis .
A bee in weewee is in desperate problem . If there are no side to climb out , like a paddle pool bird bathing tub or steep - sided pool , they will struggle , stop dead and drown . It ’s a sad sight to see a fluffy butcher dead in cold piddle . There is no excuse – assist them out and put them in a gay position away from piranha to warm up up . With a teaspoonful of sugar water they should be fine after ten minutes of peace .
Bees often hang to yourwashing lineon sunny day with chilly evenings or if there ’s a cold breeze . watch your laundry as you take it down for bee , ladybirds , butterflies and moths who do it the warm condom of a duvet cover charge or even your air sock !
Put them somewhere shelter and give them that teaspoon of sugary water we ’ve already discussed .
A Sting in the Tail
Bees are nothing to be afraid of – this once rough-cut worm is a joyfulness in the garden , and they provide the UK with food .
It ’s simple to lowball what bees freely provide for us , and we ought to give something back in return . When that something is native flowering plant and throwing out chemical atomizer we ca n’t complain .
At the very least our nestling ask to have a go at it bee are not harmful , if you do n’t desire to be near them , at least leave them alone and go across on your cognition , becausewithout bee scientists predict our nutrient horizontal surface will rapidly decrease , putting our nutrient provision in risk .
Research is attempt to find alternative methods of pollination , but the simple way is to help the pollinator we already have before their numbers fall so lowly it ’s unacceptable to get them back .
Save the Bee , Save the Planetis not a catchy quote – it ’s a fact that we need to dissemble on , and fast .
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