Bee friendly weed & feed for lawns?

[HuminaHuminaHumina]

Is there one? I can find bee friendly lawn feeder and bee friendly path weed killer but not a weed and feed for lawns. Actually I’d settle for just a weed killer for lawns. I’ve tried avoiding weed killers altogether but now my lawn is getting to be mostly daisy, creeping buttercups, dandelions and moss! There is just too much for me to be able to dig out. Any suggestions/recommendations?
TIA.

Dandelions are a favourite for bees. If you want to be bee friendly, leave the weeds. If you need to get rid, a basic feed and weed will work fine. They work on plants, not insects so as long as used as instructed, it will do the trick

Um.

The bee friendly approach would be to encourage daisies, dandelions and other "weeds", so that they have something to feed on.

I don't really understand why lawns of uninterrupted grass with no flowers in became desirable in the first place? Daisies are so pretty. I suspect it has a lot to do with chemical companies looking for another market, then aggressively marketing the idea that you need to "kill weeds" for a "perfect lawn".

Leave them? Less mowing, looks better and wildlife prefer it

No such thing as a wildlife friendly selective weed killer. Vinegar does kill weeds and acetic acid (which is in vinegar) is being sold as a weed killer now, but isn’t harmless to the animals in the line of fire. Learn to love the wildflowers and if you must remove the dandelions, cut them out with a tool.

I’ve been happy to leave them for so long, but it’s getting to the point I’m running out of grass!
The front is pretty much all clover, which I’m happy with, but the creeping buttercup in the back is just awful to look at and walk on. My whole garden is planted for bees and pollinators, so I don’t think they are going to miss out with me getting rid of the weeds taking over my lawn at the back.

It’s not so much a matter of the wildlife missing out from weed killer use (though that is also important) — it is primarily a matter of the sheer toxicity of these products. That also applies to the person applying it and the owners and inhabitants of the garden. Many of these products are cancer causing and damage DNA. Many cause birth defects, Parkinson’s and other horrors. Just say no to the toxics.

This is what I’m now dealing with after not using anything except digging them out for several years (scruffy gardening shoe for scale. Practically no grass left, it’s not just a few daisies & dandelions. If anyone has any other suggestions I’m open to them.

Daisies are part of a lawn, to me. I would hate just an expanse of green.

The in-laws lawn was left untreated as they got older, but it was assiduously mowed quite short by the chap who kept their garden neat. It became a rather interesting mix of low growing wildflowers, clover and not much actual grass, but the mowing kept the bigger weeds such as dandelions and buttercups down.
It was certainly bee friendly, there were burrows of one of the types of solitary bee all over it.

Here’s a guide to organic lawn management https://www.bbc.co.uk/gardening/basics/techniques/organic_lawn1.shtml
however we don’t bother with most of this— we have clover, birds foot trefoil, self heal and daisies in our lawn and think it looks lovely. Re management DH draws the line at dandelions and digs them out with a narrow trowel and we mow quite high to encourage flowers. It is good to leave the clippings on most of the year to feed the lawn and improve the soil — soil is often not good on lawns, favouring plants like dandelions.

Well, that's weird as I have NEVER seen a bee on my dandelions (otherwise I might feel more inclined to let them bee 🐝 😂)!

...nor a caterpillar on my large crop of nettles (although I did see a big lovely striped caterpillar on some bramble this weekend - he was actually eating it too)!!

Did you see the pic?
It is green.
Great big clumps of green leaves and stalks with the occasional daisy flower, but mostly just green. It feels horrible underfoot and really doesn’t attract bees at all.

Re digging out dandelions with a narrow trowel - and likewise for buttercups - this is one of the many jobs you can use a hori hori for.

I have two lawns - one I managed to fix - dandelions are easy, they occupied 50% of my lawn - got the dandelion tool and reseeded - took time but worked well.
My other lawn at the front of the house is full of shiny geranium - very little grass, and it's so hard to pull up and I have given it a good go when the ground is wet and I just couldn't do it. Options - cover the lot in weed-proof membrane for however long it takes to kill all the plants (take too long for front of house), re-turf( expensive and likely the weeds would come back) So I got in a lawn expert company - who have sprayed the lot with Round-Up, they'll be back in 5 weeks to remove the dead vegetation - put topsoil on and reseed. I feel bad about the round-up - but it was at the front of the house - the neighbours get a little squiffy about the untidy presentation.
My long-term plan is to plant some trees and eventually replace all the grass with plants.

ungarden
You killed a load of shiny leaved cranesbill- a beautiful little pink flowered plant- with Roundup? Just why???

Another thing to bear in mind is that, with the increasing probability of summer droughts we're going to see (difficult to imagine after the winter we've just had, but it is what is predicted to happen), an all grass lawn will swiftly yellow and die. Lawn wildflowers are often way more drought resistant. Clover's particularly good.

OP, those daisies look like they're just coming into bloom. To provide a different perspective, I've just assisted in a species count in a wildflower meadow at a fritefly posh and fashionable property, and to have our quadrants land on a patch with that kind of proportion of flowers to grass made us very happy!

This stuff is also incredibly harmful to worms- worm populations have declined by a third in the last couple of decades which is really worrying. It's not just bees that are afected.

There are serious problems with Roundup, the 'active' ingredient in which is classified as a probable human carcinogen. That means it gives you cancer, which has led to lots of lawsuits in the US brought by applicators who have cancer and blame their Roundup applications. Even if people don't care about the environment (though they should), they must surely care about their own health.

Lots of things are probably carcinogenic- no one can avoid them. I thought about it and I have no regrets.

@crackofdoom shiny geranium had taken over my lawn and it was impossible to remove - it did not look beautiful, my lawn looked bloody awful.

What about, say, scarifying all that stuff, then going over it with vigorous seeding? Speaking as someone with a similar issue with my lawn - it looks good but is very mossy. I did try scarifying it but it was very expensive to get a lawn firm to do it - £250 at least if I recall, and it didn't really work long term - that said I didn't do the whole grass seed bit afterwards....

I did try a toxic blast of weedkiller last summer - it bloody stank for at least a week and I felt bad for the wildlife. This thread suggests the bee-friendly weed killer sold at the garden centre, pet-friendly stuff, is not very good either? I don't know how it distinguishes the weeds from the grass, I admit.

@NewspaperTaxis Mine was hit with the weedkiller yesterday, lawn company did it for me - it does not smell.
The scarification and reseed will cost £140 and the top dressing will cost £120
We're in the Southeast.

I don't know how it distinguishes the weeds from the grass, I admit.

I think some selective weed killers kill dicot plants but not monocots (which includes all grasses). How, I don't know but they're the two big fundamental plant types.

This looks like a good source of info/ideas

www.rhs.org.uk/lawns/selecting-weedkillers

Hey, so are we - in Surrey. May I tap you for your lawn company?!

As does mine. It’s ugly and lumpy and doesn’t attract the bees at all.

I’ve been organic gardening for years, but I now have arthritis and can’t dig it out any longer and definitely can’t scarify myself, the grass is going to be non existent at this rate. I just wondered if there was some sort of suitable product out there -but clearly not. I’d seeded this lawn myself and had been quite proud of it, I may as well have saved myself the cost and effort the way it looks now.

We put Westland Safe Lawn on our lawn a couple of weeks ago. It is a fertiliser made of natural ingredients, apparently, and it gets rid of weeds by encouraging the grass to be thick and lush so it out-competes the weeds.

Did it work? Well, I think DH's application may have been a little patchy because there are some areas (round the edges, where I think he put more on, or where his "stripes" overlapped) where the lawn is indeed lush and green, and other areas where it looks the same as before. So I think it does work, but don't skimp.

Have a look at Neudorff Weedfree Plus as well (www.greengardener.co.uk). It kills weeds with pelargonic acid (from geraniums) and claims to be totally sage for insects, as well as children, pets, chickens etc.