The crocus bulbs we plant in the autumn flower in February and early March. We love them because they bring early colour to the garden after winter. But the bumblebees love them for food. I always buy a variety with a bee-friendly label on it just in case such as Crocus tommasinianus (Best to be on the safe side these days with so many sterile plants sold just for their looks rather their ability to feed bees).

When bumblebee queens emerge after hibernating they’re often starving, so they need all the food they can find. But they only eat nectar and pollen from flowers. Nectar gives them the energy to forage for more food and to look for a good place to make a nest. Pollen is the protein-rich food they feed to their babies, after their eggs have hatched into hungry larvae.

Crocuses are among the best early flowering food for bees if they’re planted in the sun where the bees like to forage. I also plant mine under our apple tree with snow drops, because they’re natural woodland flowers and look so lovely there, but in truth it’s a bit too shady for the bees.

A patch of crocuses in a sunny corner will deliver a big meal for a queen bumblebee.

The first bee has been spotted on the roof. It’s a fluffy white-tailed bumblebee (Bombus lucorum) collecting nectar and pollen from a Cosmos flower. This exciting news comes a few months after Urban Bees Ltd was contracted by Savills to install four planters on a corner of the roof. These wooden planters have been gradually filled with a variety of plants that will flower in succession from early spring right through to late autumn, which is when bees are out looking for food if the weather is mild and dry. Bees only eat nectar and pollen from flowers. The nectar is their energy drink ( turned into honey by honeybees), pollen is the protein food they feed to their babies.

We don’t know where this bumblebee lives, but by making a corner of the roof on 111 Buckingham Palace roof bee-friendly, we are providing a nectar refueling stop for her and any other London bees on their way home after a hard day’s foraging for food. The lose of flower-rich land as a result of urban development in towns and cities means there is less food for bees and other pollinating insects. The planters are helping to create a B-Line through Victoria by linking existing green spaces, like parks, together. It’s easier for the bees to fly from one big green space to another if they can stop off for a snack en route.

The National Pollinator Strategy for England 2014 set out a ten year plan to help pollinating insects. The planters on the roof are playing their part by feeding bees and raising awareness about their importance . Bees pollinate most of the fruits and vegetables we eat and in cities they pollinate trees and bushes that produce fruits and berries for birds, so they are a vital part of the eco-system and contribute massively towards biodiversity.

There are more than 200 species of bees in the . The honeybee lives in man-made hives, but the 24 different species of wild bumblebees and the hundreds of solitary bee species need to find a home in undisturbed holes in the ground, soil or old masonry. New construction makes nesting sites more scarce. We can help by providing ‘bee hotels’ for cavity nesting solitary bees.

Two bee hotels are attached on stands to the rooftop planters. They are packed full of small hollow tubes where solitary red mason bees (Osmia bicornus) can check in during the spring and lay their eggs. The following spring, when the weather warms up and the apple blossom is out, the new generation or red mason bees will start to emerge from the nest. They will find a mate, forage for pollen and nectar nearby, and then the female bee will look for new tube where she can lay her eggs and start the cycle all over again.

When the bees have laid a number of eggs in a tube they seal over the entrance with some mud. When the new bees emerge they eat through the mud to get out (like the pic right). Urban Bees placed some sealed tubes from another bee hotel into these ones in the hope we would see bees emerge this spring. Unfortunately, we weren’t lucky enough to see any this year. We hope to see solitary bees checking in next spring.

In the meantime we’ll keep a look out for bees snacking in the planters. With the catmint (Nepeta) and lavenders coming into full bloom, there should be many more sightings over the summer months.

For a list of bee-friendly flowers you can grow throughout the year, go to Urban Bees forage guides.

Anyone can make a DIY ‘bee hotel’ for a garden or even a balcony.

We continued to work with our corporate clients Grosvenor Estates and KPMG to improve the landscape for honey bees and wild bees. A tour of Kensington Roof Gardens showed them how it’s possible to have 125 trees on a London roof top in just 18 inches of soil providing year round bee-friendly forage. We are passionate about the potential for cities to have more roofs like this to help pollinators and ourselves by increasing flood resilience and reducing pollution.

Two roofs high above Canary Wharf are now providing more forage for bees; one large green roof managed by Willerby Landscapes, where we advised on replacing some of the plants struggling in the exposed conditions with other more robust varieties that bees like, the other roof where the hives are located at KPMG now has planters containing year-round bee flowers. And thanks to Alec Butcher, landscape manager at Canary Wharf management, the few green spaces in Canary Wharf are now planted with more pollinator-friendly shrubs and flowers including holly bushes, Pulmonaria and Erysimum bowles mauve.

More bee hotels for solitary red mason bees (Osmia bicornis) to nest in are now installed across London, including on the side of our garden shed. We put a bee hotel on the roof at Weils law firm in the City, having worked with the gardener last year to improve the bee forage on the terrace. It’s used for events during the summer so isn’t suitable for hosting a hive but the company was keen to learn about how they could help wild bees instead. We gave a talk to staff about what they could do at home to provide shelter and food. We also encouraged KPMG staff at its Watford office to create a bee and bug hotel in their car park.

We gave talks and ran workshops throughout the year for corporates and local communities on how to provide better forage for wild bees (including a talk at urban gardening show, GROW ) and how to build your own bee hotel out of recycled wooden organ pipes (kindly donated by St Peter’s Church in Hackney) or out of plastic water bottles and hollow bamboo canes. One of the most enjoyable events was at the Dalston Eastern Curve garden, a weekend of Bees, Butterflies and Blooms for the Chelsea fringe. The brightly painted bee hotels are now proudly displayed on a south facing wall. We hope they will be inhabited this coming spring. As part of the weekend, we created bee ID charts that allowed visitors to spot the different bees they saw.

In King’s Cross we continued to work with youth charity, Global Generation. This year, we partnered on a Bees for a Better World project, funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund, which introduced young people to both wild bees and forage around the urban development and on an organic farm in Wiltshire.

The HoneyClub KX Bee Trail app, developed by Honey Club members (Urban Bees, Wolff Olins and Global Generation) was the culmination of our educational work around bees and forage. The exciting app allowed visitors during August to tour London’s new development counting four species of bees at a various locations, learning about the forage and bee habitat en route and unlocking vouchers to use at bars and cafes in the area. Thanks to Des Smith, head gardener for Willerby Landscapes on the King’s Cross site, for working with us to map the bee-friendly flowers throughout the year across the development and Argent for supporting the piloting of the app.

The Urban Bees apiary continued to flourish at London Wildlife Trust’s Camley Street Nature Park, and we gave LWT volunteers an opportunity to learn more about the workings of a hive and to enjoy the honey that the bees produced over the summer.

We are also began training corporate beekeepers for a couple of new clients in central London this year.

As 2015 draws to a close with unseasonably warm weather in London allowing honeybees to forage over Christmas, and flooding in the north of England, we have to make our cities more resilient.

One of the highlights of the year was meeting planting design professor, Nigel Dunnett at the opening of the first rain garden in central London. It’s outside the HQ of the John Lewis Partnership in Victoria where Urban Bees has worked with Victoria BID to train responsible beekeepers to keep hives. The rain garden will capture rainwater runoff from surrounding buildings and slowly release it into soil, to be absorbed by 30 different types of plants and two Italian Alder trees.

By making cities more bee-friendly by planting more trees and shrubs to feed them and other pollinators, and to act as urban drainage we create a win, win for bees and for us.

Thanks to all our partners and collaborators and people that inspired us in 2015.

Great to meet Nigel Dunnett at the opening of the John Lewis rain garden in Victoria, yesterday. Professor Dunnett is responsible for making wildflower meadows popular again following the success of his beautiful creations at the London Olympics .

The rain garden couldn’t be more different from the vibrancy and wildness of the planting in the Queen Elizabeth park. It’s smart, tidy and clean, but still includes more than 30 plants selected for their attractiveness to pollinators, and ability to cope in shade and have their roots in water. They include lots of pink Bergenia ‘Overture’, forget-me-not like blue flowers and sliver follage of Brunnera macrophylla ‘Jack Frost’, and the white brush-like flowers of Tiarella ‘Spring Symphony’. All these are in flower now. They’ll be followed later in the summer by Rudbeckia, Kniphofias (Red hot pokers) , Asters and the architectural Acanthus hungarlcus.

This is the first rain garden in central London; “a pioneering project that be the shape of the future as we adapt our urban environment to climate change”, said Dunnett. He thanked the John Lewis partnership for being “courageous” in taking the risk.

The cobbled area in front of the JLP HQ had seen problem flooding in recent years. The rain garden will help use rainwater runoff from the surrounding buildings, as well as create a biodiverse, attractive green space for people and wildlife to enjoy. It will look more attractive as it matures.

How it works – instead of rainwater runoff going into the drains which can lead to flooding after a torrential downpour, guttering has been diverted so rain water is collected and stored in a large raised planter (rather like a water butt, but with plants in it) with any overspill then slowly running into the garden itself where it will be soaked up by the plants, soil and two newly planted majestic Italian alder trees.

This seemingly simple idea took two and a half years to come to fruition and about £50k to create. It’s been designed by Nigel Dunnett, who is professor of planting design and urban horticulture at Sheffield University, and The Landscape Agency , and delivered by Landform consultants for the Victoria BID.

The project received funding and support from the Mayor of London’s Greening the BIDs project and Natural England via the Cross River Partnership regeneration agency.

Signage will be going up soon to explain to the thousands of people who pass by the area each day what the rain garden aims to achieve.

Twenty five new solitary bee homes will be going up in gardens, parks and on balconies around De Beauvoir in the next few weeks following a ‘how to make a bee hotel’ free workshop yesterday run by Urban Bees for the Hackney community.

Held at St Peter’s Church, the frames for the bee hotels were made from old, wooden organ pipes kindly donated by the church. Old floor boards were srewed in for the backing.

Local residents donated the bamboo stems, from their gardens, in which the solitary bees will hopefully make their nests come the spring.

Those confident with a hack saw cut the hollow stems into 15cm length pieces.

For others, Brian had cut hundreds of pieces earlier in true Blue Peter style ready to fit inthe frames.

Young participants painted their bee hotels fantastic bright colours. A budding Pollock and Rothko perhaps!

It’s no good just taking your hotel home, fixing it firmly to a shed or wall or fence in a warm location, at least 1 metere above ground. The red mason bees need forage from March to July. It’s as important as proving habitat where they can nest and lay eggs.

So everyone left with a bee-friendly plant, mainly Forget-me-nots (myostis) from my garden which supply the solitary bees with nectar and pollen. And some pulmonaria from Diana Jackson’s garden.

Everyone had a fantastic afternoon. I gave a short talk about solitary bees – the unsung heros of the bee world.

“I never knew bees were so fascinating,” said Julia Porter, St Peter’s vicar and now a proud owner of a bee hotel made with her own hands that will go into the vicarage garden.

Hackney council gardener, Craig Davies, will be putting three up in De Beavoir Square.

Special thanks to Gillian Borrie for helping with the refreshments and Ruth Napolitano for taking donations to cover the costs of the event. And for Diana Weir for coming up with the idea in the first place.

Everyone went home very happy to be doing something positive for bees locally. The red mason bees and leafcutter bees will be emerging next month and looking for new homes. Workshop participants hope to share photos of bees checking-in to their hotels.

This is the first of a series of events that Urban Bees will be involved in, designed to make the De Beauvoir neighbourhood of Hackney more bee and pollinator -friendly.

Around Valetine’s Day is the beginning of the beekeeping calendar.

With the days getting longer, and the catkins on the alder and hazel out, the honeybees are starting to fly on milder days like today when the temperature hit 12 degrees at our apiary in Camley Street. Here’s a bee having a rest on the roof of a hive after a short flight.

So myself and Brian took a romantic walk around the apiary to check how the bees have been doing over the winter.

He opened up the roof of all the hives and placed a feed of fondant over the hole in the crownboard for bees who may need it as a food supplement until more flowers are out. And if we have a cold spell, they may not be able to forage for a few weeks.

A couple of hives didn’t make it through, but the majority are looking good at the moment.

Great to see Red Mason bees (Osmia bicornis) using the solitary bee hotels we’ve put up in the garden.

The female bees emerged a few weeks ago, have mated, and are now busily laying their eggs in the hollow tubes. They forage for pollen from the flowers and pack it around each egg so when it hatches later in the summer it has plenty of food. She makes a partition wall of mud between each egg. After she’s laid eight to ten eggs in each tube, she seals the tube with mud she’s brought back to the hotel. Then she does the same in a second tube. This bee seems to have completed two tubes. She’ll keep going until she’s laid all of her eggs, which could be another three tubes.

Unfortunately we’ve still not heard of any reports of bees checking into the bee hotels we made at our workshop earlier in they year. They’ve been put around the neighbourhood in sunny spots but the bees have yet to find them. There may be too much dappled light in front of this second hotel.

As well as suitable habit, the Red mason bees need food.

Nancy fixed the bee hotel she made at St Peter’s Church in February to her garden’s very warm south facing wall. We saw it today, when she opened her lovely garden as part of the Open Garden Scheme. And we were thrilled to see that about five of the bamboo tubes were sealed with mud, which means Red Mason bees have checked-in and laid their eggs here.

Next year there could be as many as 30 bees emerging from the nest in the early spring,

The year kicked off with Alison giving a successful Tedx talk at Warwick University on the Urban Buzz; why we need to create bee-friendly cities to benefit both humans and pollinators.

Our work with corporate clients Grosvenor Estates and KPMG allowed us to put some of this thinking into action. We were not only teaching beekeeping in Mayfand Belgravia but raising awareness with head gardeners from Eaton Square to Canary Wharf about the importance of year-round forage for bees in cities and the need for bee habitats. 90 femme gris rose And by partnering with roofing company Wild about Roofs we were instrumental in getting lavender roofs installed as a retro-fit on Grosvenor properties in Mayfair.

We have also helped a law firm and its gardner to change their planting scheme to begin transforming its large roof terrace into a haven for bees. Will see the initial results in late spring.

A month by month Urban Bees’ Plants for Bees guide online as well as a pull-out leaflet now accompanies our updated popular Urban Bees’ Trees for Bees guide.

We worked more closely with River of Flowers, creating bee pastures, wild flower meadows and fragrant walks on the Clapham Manor housing estate in south London with the help of Lambeth council and some fabulous local residents; young and old.

We also created an attractively packaged Urban Bees and River of Flowers pollinator seed mix which will be on sale this coming spring.

Urban Bees continued to support the Honey Club in King’s Cross with meet-the-bees sessions at the Skip Garden for Global Generation’s young people and business members of the Honey Club. Brian also inspired many construction workers on the King’s Cross development with his stories about the amazing workings of the bee hive. Some of which was captured on film.

Taster days at Camley Street Nature Park continued to prove popular. We also ran a few at Regent’s Park this year as well, including one all day out-door course as it was such a warm September day.

The highlight of the year for the bees was without doubt the delightful weather. After a few bad years, the spring and summer of 2014 couldn’t have been better; an early warm spring, followed by a a long, very warm summer that carried into October giving bees the chance to collect an abundance of ivy pollen and nectar before the onset of winter. They also produced copious amounts of delicious honey after the disappointing yields of previous years. As a result, 2014 King’s Cross honey should be available well into next year.

The other good news was the launch of the government’s pollinator strategy.

Is this the most expensive bug house in London? This wood pile with holes drilled into the logs to provide nests for solitary bees has been created by Nick Butler, lead gardener for Grosvenor estates. And it is hidden away in a corner of Eaton Square no less.

It represents a shift in how Grosvenor is going to be managing its private squares and gardens in future with pollinators and biodiversity more in mind. Kanken Nick says he has wanted to introduce more flowering, pollinator-friendly plants into the gardens since he became the Grosvenor beekeeper. fjallraven kanken uk The company received hives as part of the Victoria Business Improvement District (BID) beekeeping initiative and Urban Bees trained Nick and others in the company.

“Horticultural college doesn’t really teach you about bees, but being there physically with the honeybees I thought I should help them and the wild bees out by providing better food for them and habitat for the solitary bees and the bumblebees. pegasus I’ve got the whole gardening team involved and the local residents’ garden committees. First and foremost, the gardens have to look good but there is a lot of interest.”

The bees will be very happy with all the Ceanothus , digitalis, Backpack mahonias and aliums that are currently being planted.

Laying a wildflower meadow turf on a council estate in south London and sowing a strip of wildflowers around it is the beginning of a project Urban Bees and River of Flowers are doing to transform pockets of ugly, unloved green spaces into vibrant, colourful bee pastures.

This is our first collaboration to improve bee and other pollinator habitats for food and shelter.

We were asked by Lambeth council to come up with ideas for improving the environment and making it more bee-friendly after calls from residents to brighten up the place.

We will be pioneering the planting of wildflower bee pastures for wild bees, honeybees and other pollinators. We’re also creating a ‘fragrant walk’ with flowering herbs that bees love and dotting some ornamental bee favourites around the estate including hebes, Mini choisyas and wallflowers.

We’re hoping to get local school children to help us finish this bee and bug hotel.

Resident’s will be out planting in May to create the first bee pastures in raised beds. They’ll also be planting fruit and veg around the estate as part of a local residents’ food growing programme.

Thanks to Crispin and the fathers at Father Nature for doing all the hard lifting, 2012 raking and laying for the wildflower meadow. Mini Backpack (Now we have to hope for lots of rain and that people and dogs don’t trample over it.)

And to our youngest helper.

The lessons we learn here will inform future Urban Bees/River of Flowers projects to make our cities more pollinator-friendly.

The international taskforce on systemic pesticides – a group of global, independent scientists including Professor Dave Goulson at Sussex University – has spent four years analysing all the peer reviewed studies on neonics and fipronil and has today concluded that there is clear evidence of serious harm to honeybees and other pollinators worldwide as well as earthworms and birds. There’s a good video of their findings here.

Neonics are the most widely used group of insecticides globally, with a 40% market share and sales worth more than US $2.63bn in 2011. They include imidacloprid which is also used in domestic treatments to prevent fleas in cats.

Alarm bells were first raised about this new class of pesticide 20 years ago when French beekeepers accused Bayer’s seed dressing for sunflowers, sold as Gaucho, of killing their bees. Kanken Ever since the industry has been denying the harmful effects of its products on bees, claiming that every independent piece of research is flawed in some way or another; lab tests feed too high a concentration of the pesticide to the bees; field tests have too many other variables so you can’t pin higher bee mortality on their products.

When we were researching A World without Bees to try to get to the bottom of what was causing the huge collapse of honeybee colonies in the US in 2007 and 2008, we found time and again that the relevant tests hadn’t been done by the regulatory authorities to determine the real risks the neonics posed to honeybees. So it was impossible to say that they were safe. Mochilas Big Yet they were being licensed all over the world and sold in their millions. Until the tests were done we argued that we needed a worldwide ban, using the precautionary principle. Last year, the EU introduced a two year ban and just last week President Obama set up a task force charged with saving bees from mysterious decline which could well lead to a temporary suspension while better tests are undertaken.

The US have been looking into bee die offs since they were first reported on a massive scale seven years ago. Beekeepers pointed the finger at the neonics straight away but the US department of agricultural didn’t want to know. It blamed poor beekeeping, parasites, such as the varroa mite, and poor nutrition. All of these play a major part in bee health, but the role of pesticides should not be underestimated.

Response from the pesticide manufacturers to the latest report, called the Worldwide Integrated Assessment report on the use of neonics and fipronil, is entirely predictable. It fails to acknowledge the report on its website. But Nick von Westenholz, chief executive of the industry lobby, the Crop Protection Agency, told the Guardian: “It is a selective review of existing studies which highlighted worst-case scenarios, largely produced under laboratory conditions. As such, the publication does not represent a robust assessment of the safety of systemic pesticides under realistic conditions of use.”

He added: “Importantly, they have failed or neglected to look at the broad benefits provided by this technology and the fact that by imising yields from land already under cultivation, more wild spaces are preserved for biodiversity. The crop protection industry takes its responsibility towards pollinators seriously.

Urban Bees and River of Flowers’ spring bulb planting weekend on Clapham Manor Estate went a treat last month. tn requin pour femme The bulbs had been carefully chosen for their attractiveness to bees and other pollinators, to provide food in the spring and throughout the year.

Jim, 10, helped to plant round headed leaks (Allium sphaerocephalon) and Ruby Giant crocuses in raised planters, and masses of native English bluebells (Hyacinthoides non-scripta) with mum Nina in the more shady beds. He said it was better than doing his homework…. internationalist and he’d learned a lot about botany and planting from Kathryn at River of Flowers.

On Sunday more residents, including Rosemary and Tammy Sharma and her two lovely children, Alex 8, and Shanti, 4 , were out in force clearing a large L-shaped bed that was overgrown with Black Nightshade (Solanum nigrum). chaussures 2017 Greg Thompson from Lambeth Living, which manages thousands of council homes in the borough, was very popular when he came down with a large bag of cultivated bulbs that the kids enthusiastically planted in the now bare soil.

The L-shaped bed was also the perfect place for some larger shrubs that the bees will like; Dogwood (Cornus), which produces small, creamy-white flowers in May and June, and St John’s Wort (Hypericum) which will have masses of yellow butter cup like flowers which the bees adore from July to October.

Fragrant Walk

We kept the Fragrant Walk free of bulbs. The bay trees, Lavender and Rosemary bushes looked good once we’d done a huge amount of weeding so you can actually see them!

Bee Pasture

The Bee Pasture (which was certainly attracting bees with its wild flowers) was also attracting the ire of some residents who clearly felt intimidated by the far too tall sunflowers and thistles that needed pulling out.

To keep residents on side, beds need regular weeding and any green rubbish this creates needs to be disposed of quickly. tavas But for this project to work long-term residents themselves will have to nurture the flowers beds and maintain them….

Plant Locks

Six Plant Locks, two on Brayburne Avenue and four on Victoria Rise were cleared of rubbish and ‘weeds’ and planted with white Snowdrops (Galanthus nivalis), ruby Crocuses and purple/bue harebells (Campanulas). There was a giant nettle in one of the Victoria Rise Plant Locks – great for butterflies but not so good for passersby!

Plant Locks need regular maintenance so hopefully the school on Victoria Rise will take could care of the ones outside its gates.

Unfortunately, the Plant Lock at the junction of St Rule Street and Wandsworth Road was also full of weeds and rubbish.

The bees’ choice at the Chelsea Flower Show 2014 was this lovely crimson thistle-like flower that was all over the show gardens. Backpack Cirsium rivulare ‘Atropurpureum‘ or plum thistle. It attracted all the bees, Backpack including this honeybee, when I visited on Tuesday.

It usually flowers in July and August so not to late to order some for a sunny spot in the garden.

Glad to say the foxgloves were out in force so plenty for the bumblebees to feed on. flyknit lunar And there was a wild feel to many of the smaller gardens so fairly bee-friendly with favourites including Nepeta and Anchusa Azurea ‘Loddon Royalist’,

Have spotted bees out enjoying the mild winter in London.

At the weekend, two large and very loud bumblebees were on a mahonia bush in my neighbour’s garden in Hackney collecting pollen from the yellow flowers. Mini I’ve yet to master the art of bumblebee identification, but from their white bottoms, I’d guess they were either white-tailed queens, buff-tailed or garden queen bumblebees. As my BBC Wildlife pocket guide chart helpfully informs me that the white-tailed bumblebees (Bombus lucorum) are one of the earliest species, flying in February, I will plump for them. The other early species I could see in the garden at this time of year, according to my guide, is the aptly named Early bumblebee (Bombus pratorum), but as that clearly has an orange backside, it wasn’t her.

I’m afraid I’ve also yet to master how to take good photos of bees on my mobile phone! But you get the idea…

Today, I had the pleasure of spying honeybees out on a white-flowered shrub in south London. femme bordeaux If anyone knows the name of this early flowering shrub please let me know. kwazi Again, it’s not easy to see the bee in my photo, but there were a number of them buzzing around, collecting pollen.

I have had an answer from the Guardian’s gardening editor @janeperrone. She has tweeted me @alisonurbanbees to say it looks like Lonicera purpusii, winter honeysuckle. chaussures 2017 “The bees love it! Nice scent too.”

I think she’s spot on.

Chloe watering the Selfheal (Prunella vulgaris) plugs she has planted on the Clapham Manor estate as part of the bee-friendly planting day organised by River of Flowers and Urban Bees on Saturday.

The day was a great success. 2012 The weather was perfect and some 50 local residents and children came out to help plant three raised beds on the estate to create one end of a ‘river of flowers’ . The three beds each had a different theme:

Chloe’s at the Food and Flowers bed, where edible wild flowers including tufted vetch, red clovers and wild carrots are planted in clumps to create swathes of tasty forage for bees and other pollinators.

Kendi, 6, was another budding gardener. roshe run He came with his grandmother and said he really enjoyed getting his hands dirty and learning about bees and plants.

Sid and his 3 year old daughter, Rose, are helping to plant up the Bee Pasture bed with a mixture of wild flowers such as white campion, yarrow and lesser knapweed, with one of my favourite bee and butterfly ornamental plants Erysimum ‘Bowles Mauve’.

Two enthusiastic young helpers on the Fragrant Walk, a long planter filled with ornamental plants that smell divine and are hugely attractive to bees and other pollinators. Backpacks The two best bee-friendly varieties of lavenders: Angustifolia ‘Munstead’ and ‘intermedia Grosso’ are accompanied by rosemary, mint, and marjorams, with bay trees down the middle.

As well as transforming what was a dark area on the estate to a much brighter, open space , this bed will provide much-needed forage from June to September. And residents can use the plants for culinary purposes. This bed also needs less watering as the plants are used to a dry Mediterranean climate.

Each of the wildflowers and garden plants were carefully selected for pollinators and people so we hope they will be enjoyed by both immensely.

Some of the happy organisers at the end of the day’s planting: L-R Josh Kerry (Lambeth council), Kathryn Lwin (River of Flowers), myself Alison Benjamin (Urban Bees) and Kerrie Mckinnon (River of Flowers). Kanken Thanks to Josh for inviting River of Flowers & Urban Bees to participate in the Clapham Greenways project and for getting the water butts on site, and to Kerrie for her invaluable planting plans for each of the beds.

Other thanks go to Crispin at Father Nature, whose volunteers and workers cleared each of the beds of tired old bushes and shrubs and prepared them with top soil. And all the residents who came along, including the aptly named Rosemary, and especially to Nina who galvanised a lot of support.

Residents involvement is key. Now the beds are planted, two of them will need constant watering during this dry, hot spell.

It’s the first community planting days that Urban Bees has been involved in. With forage such an important issue for all bees, we hope to do many more.

A second planting day on this estate will be held in June. Dates tbc …

Honeybee colony survival rates over this winter are the best they have been since the British Beekeepers’ Association started its annual survey six years ago. Hurrah…

This winter an average of just one in 10 hives perished according to the BBKA survey of close on 1000 members across England, compared to more than a third dying out the previous winter (2012/13)and an average of around 16% not pulling through across each of the previous four years?

So does this mean that bees are out of the woods and no longer need our help? It’s not quite as simple that. Backpack The threats to honeybees – the varroa mite, lack of forage and pesticide use – have not diminished. soldes The big difference during last winter was the weather. Big We had an extremely mild winter and spring came early which allowed bees to get out and collect available forage early preventing starvation and allowing them to build up their strength to deal better with their foes.

In addition, many weak colonies were wiped out during the long winter and late spring the previous year, so the ones that made it through to summer 2013 were strong going into last winter.

The good weather conditions this spring and summer have encouraged much swarming and brood development. Since varroa feed and breed on honeybee brood we could see a build up of the mite in our hives which could weaken our colonies going into this winter.

Watch this delightful animation video from River of Flowers which explains why we need more wild flowers in our towns and cities.

This was the theme of a Tedx talk, Mini the Urban Buzz, that Urban Bees gave recently at Warwick University.

Thanks to everyone who supplied photos for the talk who I wasn’t able to credit. They include River of Flowers, mercurial (urban meadow in Hackney, east London, 1 og and the tree pit planted with flowers); Melissa Cooper’s Out Walking the Dog blog which tracks nature in NYC and captured that greedy squirrel; Matthew Cohen of mattedesignphotos.com who took the fantastic photo of Vivian Wang with the Empire State in the background; and Silvia at Global Generation for her great photos of young beekeepers in the Skip Garden on the King’s Cross development site.