Please or to access all these features

Add post

Watch this thread

Save thread

Start a new thread

Flip thread

Hide thread

My feed

Active Unanswered threads

Getting started FAQ's

Unanswered threads Acronyms Talk guidelines

Hide shortcut buttons

Talk

Gardening

Find tips and tricks to make your garden or allotment flourish on our Gardening forum.

Flip

1 2 3 4

Original poster

is removing a tree/bush that bees love a really bad thing to do?

76 replies

BasinHaircut · 16/04/2015 09:56

Just moved into a new house and have inherited a lovely garden. Im no gardener so im glad that its just trees and shrubs (that I now have to learn about so I can look after them), no flowerbeds. We have to get the garden re-turfed as the grass is a bit of a mess but plan to leave the rest as it is.

EXCEPT, there is a big tree/bush that the bees are absolutely loving. Any time I look at it I can count about 10 bees at least. Its got small droopy down yellow flowers that are a bit bell-like with the stigma/filaments coming out of the ends but I don't know what its called. Its probably between 6-7ft tall and obviously very well established.

The thing is I don't much like bees, im a bit scared of them and because we have 20 month old DS I worry about him getting stung. I know we are supposed to encourage bees as much as we can and that they don't sting unless provoked etc etc, but would it be really bad if we chopped the tree down and replaced with something that bees don't like as much?

OP posts:

mousmous · 16/04/2015 12:00

leave it
bees are incredibly important and will only be interested in the flowers. they only sting if they absolutely have to.
keep the lawn free of any flowers and dc will most likely not be stung.

I grew up with bee-hives in the garden and (so far) have only been stung once --when I got too close to the hives and one got tangled in my hair.

steppemum · 16/04/2015 12:01

It could be a forsythia, they can grow as trees, it is how it has been cut and trained.

Do the flowers grow in clusters, like a fat bunch?

Original poster

BasinHaircut · 16/04/2015 12:04

nope, not rhododendron either!

The flowers are hanging/drooping down, but not in long bits (like those laburnum pics), more like little clumps IYSWIM.

OP posts:

steppemum · 16/04/2015 12:06

there are very few trees that flower now with yellow flowers. The clumps sound like azalea or rhododendron and the colour and time is right. I will look for some more pictures

steppemum · 16/04/2015 12:11

lots here

scroll down and look at all the different flower shapes, pretty much all of them come in yellow as well as the colour pictured

OttiliaVonBCup · 16/04/2015 12:12

You can't have a garden without bees.

I have lots of shrubs they love and there are always hundreds of bees buzzing around and it's fine, we manage to co exist quite nicely.

There are also bees in the parks, in next doors garden, you can't avoid them all.

BuzzardBird · 16/04/2015 12:12

like this?

steppemum · 16/04/2015 12:14

how big is one flower (not a cluster, just one)
how big is the tree - and is it a single stem tree with branches at the top, or a multi stemmed tree - which is actually a large bush

BuzzardBird · 16/04/2015 12:14

angels trumpet?

Original poster

BasinHaircut · 16/04/2015 12:16

thanks steppemum, don't worry, ill post a pic later. I cant remember what the leave are like at all so im not sure id be able to identify TBH.

mous im leaning towards leave it and see how we get on this year at least. Although if it turns out to be laburnum it might have to go anyway!

OP posts:

steppemum · 16/04/2015 12:18

angels trumpet is not frost resistant, so would depend where you are op? Also, in UK I think (but may have wrong plant) I think they don't flower till much later in the summer.

Flowering now is spring/early summer.

steppemum · 16/04/2015 12:25

hypericum? Bit early for it to be flowering though (scroll down)

link

steppemum · 16/04/2015 12:31

sorry - on a bit of detective roll! Will wait for you to post later

ChopperGordino · 16/04/2015 12:35

i'm afraid i got rid of a gigantic buddleia within a month of moving into my house and felt a little bit guilty about it, but that wasn't removed because i didn't want insects but because it was taking up 1/3 of the garden. i have replaced with other bee-friendly plants

i'm wondering whether the OP's is a type of mahonia but the flowers tend to be quite small and non-droopy i think

i can understand your feelings if you're very nervous of bees OP but it would be such a shame to get rid of something that's so beneficial

mousmous · 16/04/2015 12:35

wrt poisonous plants, my dc have 'no picking no licking' drunmed into them since they could toddle.

shovetheholly · 16/04/2015 12:42

I understand the fear - I used to be scared of them too. But bees are not wasps. They generally do not get aggressive or fly at you or try to sting you - they are peaceful little beasts who will only sting if they feel that their life is in danger (or their hive for non-solitary types). Bear in mind that honey bees will die if they sting, and that tells you that this is nature's last resort. I have spent a great deal of time outside in close proximity to them not just in the garden but in conservation, and the only time I have ever been stung by a bee was when I was tiny and we had a flowering clover lawn and I did a handstand right on top of one by accident.

They are really quite beautiful, too, if you look at them up close. Maybe reading up a bit and getting more used to going near them will help. I am trying to do this with spiders at the moment (I have a huge phobia) and it is working. I now do not mind them at all when I'm outdoors, though will still yell for DH if I spot a big 'un inside.

chocolatelife · 16/04/2015 12:48

great.
Mahonia.

That is what I want for my garden. I saw one down the road and took a photo and have been trying to locate what it is, looking in my book of shrubs, to no avail.

Thanks

chocolatelife · 16/04/2015 12:50

Mahonia's smell gorgeous dont they?

Original poster

BasinHaircut · 16/04/2015 12:52

shove maybe you can take my bees and ill take your spiders. I love spiders!

OP posts:

shovetheholly · 16/04/2015 13:00

How, just HOW, can you love spiders?!?!? shudder

Psipsina · 16/04/2015 13:09

Chop it down, and plant something else that is less scary.

You could plant a load of lavender etc, far from the house, to try and compensate.

If something is restricting your life, then don't tiptoe around it unless it's really important.

We had an ivy hedge at one house which was swarming with wasps all summer. How I'd have loved to have just set fire to it but we were renting.

We've just moved to a house with a very unestablished garden, all it had (60ft garden) was several self seeded damson trees, a catalpa right next to the house, which had to go as it would have got about 40 metres tall, and a small cherry tree and magnolia. And an enormous ugly privet bush, which had bee houses on it, etc and I just hated the damned thing so it's gone. It was in the way.

I have planted about fifty plants since then including 15 trees, 7 rose bushes, several shrubs and loads of bedding plants... we've been here 3 months, I think I'm more than compensating for a crappy privet

Original poster

BasinHaircut · 16/04/2015 13:43

Thanks Psipsina. There isn't really anywhere else to plant anything, the rest of the garden is lawn. Whatever we replaced it with will be in the same spot so something non-bee attracting.

Im going to get to the bottom of what it is and if its not poisonous then ill probably leave it this year and see if I can live with it.

OP posts:

Psipsina · 16/04/2015 13:44

Ok. Fair dos I love your name btw.

AndWhenYouGetThere · 16/04/2015 13:50

Are you sure they are bees and not wasps. If they're only bees, leave them. They are happy little souls and don't go on the attack like wasps do.

steppemum · 16/04/2015 13:52

If it is flowering now, it is very likely to stop flowering soon, and then bees will move on

Flip

1 2 3 4