Bee starvation warning. Can you help?

[Ciri]

So there is currently a bee starvation warning out. The weather hasn’t been kind and bees are really struggling. Bee keepers are having to feed their bees and this impacts on all of our pollinators since they all compete for the same food source.

If you could put out a sugar solution or some fondant icing dampened with water that can really help to see them through. It isn’t their ideal food source but it keeps them alive until the hive recovers. Good for the kids to do as a summer holiday activity too.

we need more flowers

Please don’t put sugar water out - normal water in a dish with some pebbles so they can reach the water without drowning is perfectly fine

Don't bother. OP is talking bollocks. You'll help pollinators far more by having a look here https://www.bumblebeeconservation.org/

They're usually bumbles not honeys And there's nothing about a crisis on the BBKA website.

The OP is sharing misinformation - putting out sugar water is not recommended by wildlife charities and I feel the OPs advice is harmful. I would say that sharing this advice based on one post on an anonymous forum is not a sensible thing to do without further researching the facts.

is that better?

I said if it’s a swarm it’s likely to be honey bees. Bumble bees do not swarm.

anyway I really am leaving the thread. This wasn’t meant to be an argument.

Bless you OP, you posted about the bees in a genuine concern. Unfortunately this is MN so everyone and their nan is a bloody expert on all topics, no matter how daft or specific.

I think it's highly unlikely there's any honey in your garden either, darl. 😂

Maybe bees are like cats and they go round peoples houses just making out they are starving?

You said: most bees in loft spaces will be honey

True - and I'm sure OP's intentions were good, but this is harmful if adopted by everyone. It may be that her BKA was posting years old news, or that it's an issue very local to where she is, but people really shouldn't post stuff that is potentially harmful without sourcing it properly.

Yeah I know right, all those buzzing fuckers and flying insects coming in our gardens supposedly helping the planet. Don’t they know we want our outdoor spaces exactly the same as the indoor ones - sterile and bleached? That’s why I’ve painted my whole garden grey (even those bastard trees get a coat of Culprinol) and I go out every day with my anti-bac spray, and hoover the plastic grass too. I don’t worry about the plastic leaching into the ground, who cares? My garden is like a Lego set, I love it babes… 🤨

I've been leaving my lawn unmown and was planning to mow it today then saw bees around some clover I'd not even spotted. And there's a whole patch of small dandelion plants which weren't there before so I am now hesitating. Do they like ivy, going by your comment?

🤣😂😆

😂😂

My garden is full of pissed bees drunk on pollen. It's deliberately bee friendly.

I have a bunch of borage in my garden which grows very quickly and is pollen crack. It lasts a good while too. I've been tempted to ditch it in favour of other things cos it's a bit of a brute of a plant but there's nothing better for bees. Nothing refills with pollen like borage.

Really think encouraging people to plant / buy flowers is much more appropriate even in a starvation situation. Long term they need that otherwise it's bloody pointless in helping them survive short term only to be forgotten about cos people haven't seen a warning on MN about it.

To be as bee friendly throughout the year as possible, I have snowdrops, crocus, dwarf Iris for the earliest part of year. Then dafs and tulips and other bulbs. Then I go into dianthus, nigella, fennel, lavender cosmos and salvias. I've got echinacea, chamomile and bee balm in full season right now as well as salvias and thyme. Then I've got aster and heather to come. Oh and that doesn't include trees blossom. I think I've covered about 11 and a half out of twelve months in my front garden which really isn't big in size at all.

You need to have flowers with different shaped heads to help the bees most as not all bees like the same shape: you want a mix of 'daisy shaped' like echinaces, funnel shaped (where bees go inside the flower) and multiple headed flowers (think like fennel).

It's easy to do. I've worked it out and I had brown fingers.

@SoCentralRain don't forget the grey plastic turf to keep the critters away xoxo

@RedToothBrush Mahonia is a good winter-flowering plant for bees, it fills the gap between the last of the buddleia and the early bulbs.

Thank you so much for posting this. It been an awful year for us bee keepers. We had an amazing crop this time last year, this year is literally nothing. We've had to start feeding the hives (fondant/sugar solution) already just to keep the colonies going. There seems to be lots that have swarmed this year too.There is no colour to our garden and fields this summer for lack of flowers (thus their food) we will be lucky to enter winter with any hives at this rate 😢 this summer has really fucked up nature and the bees 💔

We have lots bees in our garden we have purposely left the plants they like to flourish
God knows what the neighbours think

One of the council flower beds near my house has been turned into a wildflower (and cultivated but similar style self-seeding flowers) one, and has successive flushes of different species. Currently it is mainly nigella, calendula, Californian poppies and some very pretty things with convulvulus-type flowers but in little stubby plants.

Convolvulus tricolor, I think, from a quick Google.

@Ciri I've contacted about 20 local they won't come out as they are over run and have no room

Ivy is a really important source of late season nectar for all sorts of polinators, including the ivy bee. It also provides nesting sites and cover for birds and the berries are food for birds and small furries in the winter. It's one of the unsung heroes of our native plants, and if you can let some of it go wild in your garden you'll be helping a lot of native species.