How to help bees

Message deleted by Gransnet. Here's a link to our Talk Guidelines.

As I've seen other people mentioning bee's do like purple flowers; Lavender and Phacelia etc.

Some great people to get in touch with would be the guys at Buglife which is a registered charity
'Saving the small things that run the planet'

www.buglife.org.uk/

Signed

www.sumofus.org is asking people to sign a petition to EU members to ban neonics. They are meeting within the next two weeks.

Something else to celebrate. All ten major garden centre chains, including Homebase, have agreed to stop selling neonicotinoids.
Friends of the Earth Beecause petition helped.

www.theweek.co.uk/89613/uk-to-support-ban-on-pesticides-linked-to-bee-deaths

Well done, UK government. They have actually listened to us at last.

Now, about the rest....

Got a hive this year for the first time - set up by a beekeeper friend- and she is teaching me along the way. We have 2 wild flower fields - the only left around here with all the (oh I hate this word, should be forbidden under Trades Description) and our garden is full of perrenials.

The most important flowers are very early Spring, when little else is around (crocuses and the best, lungwort) and late Summer/autumn - they went crazy on the sedums- with the large heads being totally covered with bees- loved the oregano and phloxes too.

Only took 5 jars of honey - so they have plenty for the winter- and will soon cover the hive with bubblewrap as weather turning cold now.

Got a hive this year for the first time - set up by a beekeeper friend- and she is teaching me along the way. We have 2 wild flower fields - the only left around here with all the (oh I hate this word, should be forbidden under Trades Description) and our garden is full of perrenials.

The most important flowers are very early Spring, when little else is around (crocuses and the best, lungwort) and late Summer/autumn - they went crazy on the sedums- with the large heads being totally covered with bees- loved the oregano and phloxes too.

Only took 5 jars of honey - so they have plenty for the winter- and will soon cover the hive with bubblewrap as weather turning cold now.

360,000 people have signed the 38 degrees petition to Michael Gove about neonics.
Brilliant. Just hope it works. No better way to help bees than to get rid of neonics.

This time of year ivy provides important food for insects.
Synonymous you are so lucky to have acquired a mature eucryphia. They are gorgeous trees.
Lavender definitely the number one choice of bumble bees round here. I also have a lot of golden marjoram which keeps on and on blooming and is adored by a wide range of bees and hover flies. Sedum family is also a winner in late summer.
Bumble bees like tubular flowers - anything from foxglove down.

"75% of the world's honey is now contaminated with bee-killing pesticides.

Scientists collected 200 samples of honey from around the world, and three out of four samples contained a bee-killing pesticide. Worse than that, nearly half contained a mix of several types of the toxic chemicals.

We are running out of time to stop neonics from killing our bee population. We are soaking the world in bee-killing pesticides, and even if we begin right now, it will be hard to reverse all the damage. That's why we're mobilizing a global grassroots movement to ban neonics. "

From www.sumofus.org
Bayer and Syngenta are taking the EU to court because they have banned three of the most dangerous neonics for the time being.
Bayer and Syngenta make lots of profit from those nerve agents.
To help bees you need to tell the EU you want neonics banned altogether.

A good reason to leave nettles in the garden, too, as they are one of the best foodplants for the caterpillars.

It was Red admirals I saw as well dj 3 of them.

I had a red admiral on my buddleia last week, trisher.
At the end of the year I always take a photo for records, and it's the latest I have ever had one in my garden - which is two postage stamps, one back and one front.

I'm not a gardener and only have a postage size one anyway, but what I noticed last year was the number of bees on the ivy which grows over my back wall and flowers really late-Oct/Nov. It is very tempting to cut it back but really it does seem to be one of the last places for bees to feed. I saw some when I was taking GC to school with butterflies on last week-amazing! This is the NE.

www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/10/explore-animals-bees

America not worried if their honey bees disappear because they can always buy honey from somewhere else.
So much for America first.

Age stars? Most of mine are now babies from babies of the original bulbs so I would think are ok. But I was going to buy new tulips this year so will ask our local garden centre chap about organic bulbs.

Alice whatsername garden bod, reckons that it is the bulbs we buy from Holland, which age stars the pollen of the bulbs flowers.
She recommends buying organic bulbs. I have already purchased mine this year, but will give it thought next year.

I'm not a member of Friends of the Earth, but I did sign a Ban Neonics petition a few weeks back from them. I seem to be on their mailing list!

www.avaaz.org/page/en/highlights/#

Avaaz has also hada big effect on governments and the EU with regard to pesticide use by the big pharma companies, particularly Monsanto.

I don't know if any of you are members of Friends of the Earth, but they are asking Gove to get the EU to keep the ban on neocotinoids this month.

www.foe.co.uk/bees/three-quarters-public-agree-government-should-support-tougher-action-beeharming-chemicals

Lots of info on here. 38 Degrees has over a quarter of a million signatures on a petition for him.

On Thursday there was an article about research which had found neonicotinoids in honey.

I wonder if farmers know that it would cost them £1.8 billion to pollinate their crops if neonics killed all the bees.

It probably is between the layers, NfK. We have had them twice - one nest on one side of the loft, which we still haven't found, and one on the other which DH had to remove because it was huge and was pushing the roofing felt out of place. In neither case has the nest been used two years running. I wondered if it is because it gets too hot up there.

Apart from the summer flowers, we do try to have something on offer all year around. Outside our conservatory on a wall we have a winter flowering clematis, and it is constantly visited by buff tails all winter.

We've got wild bees in our loft too DJ. They were here when we moved in twelve years ago and we only know about them because of the corpses on the floor from ones trying to go the wrong way. I clear the bodies and more appear the next year. We haven't been able to find the nest but the roof is lined so I think it must be between the layers. There's also often a wasps nest, but they have more sense and don't come inwards.

We try to only have bee and butterfly friendly flowering plants in our small plot, and I'm slowly replacing the ones that aren't such as the two enormous incurving dahlias which apparently aren't good. Our new neighbour is also planting for bees and it has made a difference, we've had loads of different sorts of bees this year, bumbly and wild - but no honey bees. Perhaps we should borrow a hive!