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February bees

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Tips for IDing February bees:

The arrival of the male Hairy-Footed Flower Bee by the end of the month is quite an event as he heralds the stirrings of spring. Although he’s a solitary bee, he is often mistaken for a bumblebee because of his cute, fluffy appearance. You may even glimpse a slightly larger and more ginger-coloured Tree bumblebee queen foraging around the same time. Before then, we need to content ourselves with sightings of huge Buff-tailed Bumblebee queens and smaller workers, and Honeybees.

You may be wondering what the Marmalade hoverfly is doing in a bee ID guide. Well, this common hoverfly is an excellent bee mimic and many novice bee spotters may confuse it for a bee. By putting its photo along the bees you may see this month, I hope it will be easier to tell them apart.

How to ID

Buff-tailed Bumblebees (Bombus terrestris):-workers and queens

These plump, golden-striped bumblebees with a thick winter coat are the ones you’re most likely to see foraging now, especially if you live in a city in the south of England. This winter activity was first recognised in the late 1990s when Buff-tailed bumblebee workers where observed in various sites. It’s believed that some summer queens set up nests in October (instead of hibernating until spring) and produced workers in November to take advantage of milder winters and the abundance of food provided by winter-flowering heathers, honeysuckles, and especially mahonia – a prickly shrub, widely planted in car parks and public green spaces, that produces copious amounts of nectar and pollen in winter. Although called Buff-tailed bumblebees, in reality only the queen has a clearly buff-coloured bottom, the workers and males have whiter bottoms. It is the workers of the winter colony you will most likely see foraging and collecting blobs of mahonia’s orange pollen in the baskets on their hind legs. If you live further north where Buff-tailed bumblebee colonies die in winter, leaving only the queens to hibernate, it is these larger (up to 24mm) queens who you may see venturing out to forage close to the ground on snowdrops and winter aconites and searching for a suitable nesting site, perhaps a used rodent hole, or a crack in a pavement.

Honeybees (Apis millefera):

Managed honeybee colonies stay alive at this time of year by keeping warm in their hive and eating the honey they spend all summer making and storing for their winter food. On milder, sunny days or even cold, bright days when the sun has warmed up the hive, some worker bees will leave the colony to forage for winter-flowering shrubs nearby, or just to go to the toilet (they don’t do this in the hive). They are so much slimmer and smoother than bumblebees that there is little chance of confusing the two.

Tree Bumblebee (Bombus Hypnorum) – queen

The queens can measure up to 20mm and are early flyers usually in March, but sometimes in late February. She has the same markings as her smaller workers and males (which you’ll see later in the spring/summer) – tawny thoraxes, black abdomens and white tails. These bees are particularly drawn to downward hanging flowers. At this time of the year that’s likely to be early comfrey and also look out for her on winter heathers. As well as foraging, the queen will be on a mission to find a nest. As their name suggestions, holes in trees are traditional nesting sites, but house eaves , loft insulation, compost heaps and bird boxes provide alternatives, so look out for her investigating walls, fences or blue tit bird boxes. Tree bumblebees have only been in the UK since 2001. They were first recorded in Wiltshire. They are thought to have come over from mainland Europe and have successfully spread right across the UK.

Solitary Hairy-Footed Flower Bee (Anthophora plumipes) – male

Solitary bees nest alone, not in large colonies with a queen, workers and drones like bumblebees and honeybees. Despite their solitary nature, solitary bees often live next door to each other in large aggregations and hang out in big groups looking as if they are playing with their mates. This is especially the case for Male hairy-footed flower bees. Their distinctive hovering and darting flight and loud buzz makes them easy to spot. You will often see a few of them chasing each other in a patch of flowers from late February to April. But far from being friends, they are arch rivals patrolling a patch of flowers they want all to themselves to woo and mate with the females.

The 14mm brown-coloured males come out a few weeks ahead of the slightly bigger velvety-black females. Their thick coats enable them to withstand the cold, but the males need to build up their energy by drinking lots of nectar from early-flowering tubular-shaped flowers. Their favourites are lungwort (Pulmonaria) , dead-nettles (Lamium album) and early flowering comfrey (Symphytum iberian). So plant these, or find a patch, and you will see the male Hairy-footed flower bees with their long tongues outstretched ready to reach deep into the base of each flower for a nectar hit.

If you can find their nesting site, which are often in the mortar in between bricks in old walls that need repointing, or old cob walls, or even in crumbling fireplace walls, then you will see and hear the males darting noisily around, and in and out the holes hoping for a female to emerge. As old walls get repointed, or replaced by newer buildings, hairy-footed flower bees lose their nest sites. You could try to make cob bricks where they may nest instead (see below).

What’s in a name? As for their delightful name, Hairy-footed flower bees do indeed have hind legs that are covered with feathery hairs right down to their tiny feet.

There are some 550 species of Flower Bees worldwide. The Genus Anthophora is made up of 2 Greek words – Anthos means flower and phora means to carry or bear, so flower bearing, which makes sense as they carry pollen and nectar from flowers. The species most common is the UK is plumipes – again 2 Green works. Pluma is feather or plume, and pes is foot. So feather-footed.

We will meet other Flower bees later in the year, but they are much smaller and zippier, so harder to spot.

There are a few other solitary bee males that emerge this month but they are much scarcer so I’ve not included them in the Bees to See in February ID guide. However, if you’d like to know more, they include Clark’s Mining Bee (Andrena clarkella) and the Small Sallow Mining Bee (Andrena praecox) and Large Sallow Mining Bee (Andrena apicata). For more information read my blog here.

Marmalade hoverfly (Episyrphus balteatus) – They are often seen hovering around flowers and will often be mistaken for wasps or bees as they are a similar size to a honeybee worker or a common wasp. But if you look closely they are quite different. They have much larger eyes than bees and their abdomen is dark yellow and has black stripes across it, with thinner stripes, that resemble a moustache, below them. But I find the easiest way to tell them apart from a bee, is that this common hoverfly will stay still on a flower or a leaf for much, much longer than a bee with its wings held out wide (as in the photo above), whereas bees tend to tuck their wings back and they never stay still for that long, otherwise I’d have much fewer blurry photos of them!

What is the point of hoverflies? Adult Marmalade hoverflies help to transport pollen between plants as they feed on nectar. The larvae of this species help to control aphid populations. More details here

How to help bees in February:

  1. Plant a tree now, or sponsor a street tree. Next month it will be too late to plant a tree in the ground as they will no longer be dormant. Some trees are better for bees than others, because they produce more nectar and pollen, or they supply it early in the spring, or in late autumn when little else is flowering. What bees really need are trees that blossom sequentially producing a bee banquet throughout the year. Check our trees for bees guide. If you plant a Himalayan cherry (Prunus rufa) or a Tibetan cherry (Prunus serrula) you’ll not only have great blossom for bees in spring (as long as you plant single flowered varieties, not double-headed ones), but also fantastic rich coppery, peeling bark in the winter.
  2. Underplant your tree with rich-coloured hellebores whose large, bowl-shaped flowers are blooming now and Elephant’s ears (Bergenia) whose tall spikes will be visited by bees from next month.
  3. Lungwort (Pulmonaria), White dead-nettles (Lamium album) and Iberian comfrey (Symphytum ibericum), which can flower as early as March, will attract Hairy-footed flower bees to your garden. Plant in large clumps in sun, or semi-shade.
  4. If you forgot to plant bulbs in the autumn, plant now in pots. They will come out later, but it’s better than letting the bulb rot. I have some Sicilian honey garlic (Allium nectaracsardium) bulbs that I clear forgot about. They should flower in May-June, but if I plant them this month hopefully they will be feeding bees by July. We’ll see.
  5. Buy and plant bulbs ‘in the green’ You can buy bee-friendly bulbs now ‘in the green’, which means you plant them while the bulbs are in growth, rather than dormant (as they were in the autumn). Snowdrops, winter aconites and crocuses will feed bees now and grape hyacinths next month. English bluebells and small, yellow wild tulips (Tulipa sylvestris) will flower in April along with wild garlic and fritillaries.
  6. Plant early spring-flowering shrubs, such as Winter Daphne  (Daphne odora) or Daphne bholua ‘Jacqueline Postill’ or Heathers (Erica carnea), which are perfect for a rockery or small flower bed with acidic, ericaceous soil. Winter flowering specimens, include white ‘Winter Snow’ (Erica carnea f. alba ), or ‘Winter rubin’ (Erica carnea ‘Winter Rubin’) for a splattering of pink. Although Rosemary usually flowers from April, with milder winters I’ve seen it flowering as early as January right through until summer. It’s also one of the most drought-tolerant plants I’ve come across and highly attractive to many different species of bee – mason, bumble, mining, and honey bees – so I’d recommend it to any bee-friendly gardener. See more shrubs here.
  7. As it gets nearer to spring there is the temptation to tidy up the garden so it will look neat when the crocuses and daffodils appear next month, but leave your garden unkept for as long as possible so as not to disturb bumblebee queens who could still be hibernating in piles of old leaves, long grasses or under a shed.
  8. It’s not too late to undertake bee hotel winter maintenance. Follow our simple step by step guide to care for these solitary bees over winter. Watch out for other insects hibernating in any empty tubes. I found queen wasps and spiders!
  9. You could try to build bricks of cob for the Hairy-Footed Flower Bee to nest in. Cob is an ancient material used for building walls and houses. It uses a mixture of clay, sand, cricket pitch loam, straw and water. There is a great video here by Devon-based naturalist, John Walter, on how to make cob bricks. They seem to need dry, warm weather to dry, or I suppose you could bring them inside to make them at this time of year. I’m going in search of cricket pitch loam! But the mistake I made last year was not protecting the cob bricks enough from the rain, so no Hairy-Footed Flower Bee nested in them. So I’m going to have to find an
  10. Submit sightings to iRecord of Buff-tailed bumblebees in the north of the UK.
  11. Submit Hairy-footed flower bee sightings to BWARS so it can update its distribution atlas.

Rescue a lifeless looking bee:

Offer a lethargic or exhausted looking buff-tailed bumblebee an emergency energy drink of sugary water. At this time of year they can get cold and tired very quickly after leaving the nest if they don’t quickly find nectar from a flower. A mixture of two tablespoons of white sugar to one tablespoon of water should revive them, but it may take them a while to find enough energy to suck up the liquid from the spoon or saucer you provide. Be patient.

An alternative is to pick her up and take her to a flowering bush, such as Mahonia, full of nectar-rich flowers if there is one nearby. But remember, bumblebees can sting if they feel threatened so pick her up on a leaf, or in a container. 

Or invest in a Bee Revival kit which comes with a tiny refillable bottle attached to key ring containing an ambrosia® bee food syrup to feed a bee in an emergency.

Never feed a bee honey. Bacterial spores of a disease that affects bee larvae can be found in honey and this brood disease is highly contagious.

You can try the same remedy for a lifeless honeybee, but they may be more inclined to sting. Again DON’T FEED THEM HONEY.

December bees – not such a rare sight

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Buff-tailed bumblebee worker Honeybee with pollen on her back legs

Tips for IDing December bumblebees:

It’s not that you won’t see bees this month, but only two species fly in the winter. And only on mild, dry days, or when it’s bright and sunny (even sometimes when there is snow on the ground!)

Given there are only two winter fliers, bee identification is a lot less interesting than in spring and summer, but it is much easier. You are either observing a wild, Buff-tailed bumblebee or a managed honeybee, and in some parts of the UK it will only be the latter as the Buff-tailed bumblebees queens are hibernating, and not producing any workers.

  • Buff-tailed bumblebees (Bombus terrestris) – until fairly recently these fluffy, golden-striped bumblebees hibernated like all other 23 bumblebee species in the UK. But in the late 1990s, they where observed foraging in various sites over winter. It’s believed that some summer queens set up nests in October (instead of hibernating until spring) and produce workers in November to take advantage of milder winters and the abundance of food provided by winter-flowering heathers, honeysuckles and especially widely-planted Mahonia. This tough shrub has bright yellow flowers that cheer up many an amenity shrubbery, car park, and city garden and park at this time of year, and produce copious amounts of nectar and pollen. You’re most likely see the workers foraging on it between now and February, especially if you live in a city in the south of England. They will collect blobs of its orange pollen in the baskets on their hind legs to take back to the nest to feed the brood.

How to ID honey bees:

Western honey bees (Apis millefera) – the managed honeybee colony stays alive at this time of year by keeping warm in their hive and eating the honey which they spend all summer making and storing to eat in the winter. On milder, sunny days or even cold, bright days when the sun has warmed up the hive, some worker bees will leave the colony to forage for winter-flowering shrubs near by, or just to go to the toilet (they don’t do this in the hive). That’s when you may see them. They are so much slimmer and smoother than bumblebees that there is no chance of confusing the two.

How to help bees in December:

  1. Plant a tree in your garden between now and February to feed bees in the future, or sponsor a street tree, or join a local tree planting group to plant trees in parks and community orchards. Some trees are better for bees than others, because they produce more nectar and pollen, or they supply it early in the spring, or in late autumn when little else is flowering. What bees really need are trees that blossom sequentially producing a bee banquet throughout the year. Check the Urban Bees’ Trees for Bees guide. If you plant a Himalayan cherry (Prunus rufa) or a Tibetan cherry (Prunus serrula) you’ll not only have great blossom for bees in spring (as long as you plant single flowered varieties, not double-headed ones), but also fantastic rich coppery, peeling bark in the winter.
  2. Plant a holly tree/bush – this will not only give you bright red berries to brighten up the garden at this time of year and feed birds, it will also produce small white flowers for bees in early summer. Note: Only female trees form fruit and they need to be planted near to a male for the bees to transfer the pollen from the male to the female to fertilise them. However the male holly could be in a neighbour’s garden. For a sure bet for berries, try self-fertile ‘J C van Tol’ which also attracts bees to its flowers.
  3. Underplant your tree with Christmas rose (Helleborus niger) whose large, bowl-shaped flowers are borne in loose clusters in late winter and spring, and Elephant’s ears (Bergenia), Lungwort (Pulmonaria) to attract early flying bees next spring.
  4. Leave your garden unkept so as not to disturb bumblebee queens who may be hibernating in piles of old leaves, long grasses or under a shed.
  5. It’s not too late to undertake bee hotel winter maintenance. Follow our simple step by step guide to care for these solitary bees over winter. Watch out for other insects hibernating in any empty tubes. I found queen wasps and spiders!
  6. Offer a lethargic or exhausted Buff-tailed bumblebee an emergency energy drink of sugary water. At this time of year they can get cold and exhausted very quickly after leaving the nest if they don’t quickly find nectar from a flower. A mixture of two tablespoons of white sugar to one tablespoon of water should revive them, but it may take them a while to find enough energy to suck up the liquid from the spoon or saucer you provide. Be patient. One way to ensure you are always prepared to revive a bee is by carrying a Bee Revival Kit with you at all times. It’s a vial filled with an ambrosia syrup that attaches to a key ring.
  7. An alternative is to pick a bee up and take her to a flowering bush, such as Mahonia, full of nectar-rich flowers if there is one nearby. But remember, bumblebees can sting if they feel threatened so pick her up on a leaf, or in a container. 
  8. Never feed a bee honey. It sounds counterintuitive, but the bacterial spores of a disease that affects bee larvae can be found in honey and this brood disease is highly contagious.

Urban Bees and PWC

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Urban Bees has a new client: auditor’s Price Waterhouse Coopers. It began last year when their London gardener, who we worked with at Weil law firm, asked us how to make the terraces and roofs at PCW’s two London offices better for bees and other pollinators. As a result, he’s planted more fruit trees and early and late flowering perennials, shrubs and herbs. And we are hoping to install bee hotels, observation boxes, bee sand planters and piles of drilled wooden logs – all for solitary bees – by spring 2024, to create places where different solitary bee species can nest.

We are giving a series of talks to staff about different bees and their importance and how we can help them. We emphasise that having a hive of honeybees is not the way to save bees and in fact honeybees can often outcompete wild, solitary bees and bumblebees in urban areas. PWC are following our advice and are putting in measures to help wild bees on their offices in London and beyond.

We ran our first bee safari at the Embankment Place office on August 3, which participants thoroughly enjoyed and they seemed to learn a lot – just even the difference between a honeybee (other companies have hives nearby, so they forage on the PWC terraces), a Buff-tailed bumblebee (Bombus terrestris) and a Common carder bee (Bombus pascuroum). Lavender proved the biggest hit with the bees.

The second bee safari at EP was postponed because of rain until the first week of September, which was a heatwave. The lavender had gone, so the bees were on a mixture of Catmint (Nepeta), a shrub called Bluebeard or Caryopteris x clandonensis and Anise hyssop (Agastache foeniculum). We didn’t see much variety of bees – just the same as last month.

Comments from staff:

“Loved the bee safari. I never knew there was more than one type of bee and that only one makes honey.”

“Can’t wait to start planting some of these flowers in my garden and see which bees arrive.”

“What a great way to spend my lunch hour. I’ve learned so many new things.”

“Looking forward to seeing different bees next spring.”

“My daughter is going to love this bee guide. Maybe they can do something similar at her school.”

Plans for 2024 include:

  • Installing bee hotels for cavity-nesting bees and a bee observation box so staff can see the life cycle of a Red mason bee nesting in the box
  • Installing a bee sand planter for ground-nesting mining bees
  • putting up signs about the different bees staff may see visiting the terraces at Embankment Place
  • running more bee safaris
  • running bee hotel workshops where staff assemble flat-pack wooden bee hotels to take home
  • visiting regional offices to run bee hotel workshops
  • advising contractors how to make terraces and rooftops in regional offices better for bees and biodiversity.

July bees to spot

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Tiny black solitary bees – less than half the size of a 14mm honey bee – are out in force this month. The only way I can spot them is to closely observe their favourite flowers. Find out what they are below. The very Small scissor bee (our tichiest UK bee), measures just 4.5mm, the diminutive Common-yellow face bee is not much larger, and Furrow bees are also small but with an longer body.  Luckily, larger Patchwork leafcutter bees and chunky Wool carder bees are much easier to spot. And if you’re in the south of England, look out for the very nippy, 8mm Four-banded flower bee. I’m always excited about seeing male bumblebees this month. They look even cuter than the workers and the queens with their fluffy yellow faces!

Tips for IDing July bumblebees:

  • Male Red-tailed bumblebees (Bombus lapidaries) and White-tailed bumblebees (Bombus lucorum) should be flying around now because it is the time of year when the bumblebee colony is getting ready for mating. If you remember in early spring the queens emerged, foraged and looked for a nest. The first eggs they laid were worker females who were able to take over foraging duties from the queen when they became adult bees allowing their mum to focus on laying more eggs to strengthen the colony. By mid summer, she switches to laying some eggs that are male, and they are now emerging as adult males and foraging for nectar to give them energy to mate when new virgin bumblebee queens appear. The males’ sole job is to mate. They can spread the genes of their colony with many virgin queens from a different colony, but the queens only mate once. The male Red-tailed bumblebee is actually multi-coloured with fluffy yellow hairs on his face, two yellow bands on his black body and a red tail to boot making him surely one of our most attractive bees. The White-tailed bumblebee males, and the very similar Buff-tailed bumblebee males, also have endearingly bright yellow hairs on their face. The other clue that a bumblebee is male is that it doesn’t collect pollen. Males are smaller than the queens.

You will also continue to see workers of some of our commonest bumblebee flying this month: Buff-tailed and white-tailed bumblebees, Common carder bees,  Red-tailed bumblebees, Tree bumblebees and Garden bumblebees. And the odd cuckoo bumblebee, like the Vestal cuckoo bee will be around this month. Here’s a full guide to cuckoos. ID tip: They have longer, more pointy tails than nest-making bumblebees and no pollen baskets because they get the host bumblebee workers to feed their young.

How to ID July solitary bees:

  • Patchwork leafcutter bee (Megachile centuncularis) is one of our most common leafcutter bees. They get their name, like many solitary bees, from how they construct their nests. The leafcutters cut pieces of leaf from plants, including roses and lilac, to line their nests. A bit smaller than a honeybee, leafcutters are brownish grey and the easiest way to identify them is that they collect pollen on the underside of their tummy in orange-coloured pollen brushes. As they have a habit of lifting up their abdomen in the air while feeding on flowers, this orange underside is clearly visible. They will nest in bee hotels alongside red mason bees, plugging the entrance of the tubes with leaf. Look out for a female flying with a piece of leaf as big as herself clasped between her legs. Like this fantastic footage captured by Devon-based field naturalist, John Walter.
  • The Four-banded flower bee (Anthophora quadrimaculata) is much smaller than the earlier flying Hairy-footed flower bee. They display the same darting movement and high pitched buzz, but being just 9mm are more difficult to spot as they zip around. The males have big, green eyes – like the smaller Green-eyed flower bee (Anthophora bimaculata) – and they both noisily patrol patches of flowers and are polylectic – feeding on many garden flowers including catmints and lavender, and wild flowers like Black Horehound and dead-nettles. Both species seem to be confined to the South of England.
  • The Wool carder bee (Anthidium manicatum) is easy to see with its yellow spots along the side of its chunky body. if you have a patch of Lamb’s Ear (Stachys byzantina), you may have seen the females visiting already to collect the soft downy material from the underside of the leaves to line their nests. They roll the hairs into a ball as big as themselves to carry home to their nest in a ready-made cavity (maybe your bee hotel). Here she makes a hole in the middle of the ball, where she places the pollen and lays her egg on top. Unusually for bees, the males are larger. They aggressively defend their patch of purple flowers by attacking intruders in mid-air, armed with spikes under their abdomen. I’ve also seen females using their long tongues to feed on foxgloves in my garden and Black horehound along the canal.
  • NOTE: Carder means to ‘tease out fibres’. Despite having a similar English name to the social bumblebee called a Common carder bee (Bombus pascuorum), a Wool Carder Bee is not a bumblebee, it is a solitary bee nesting alone.
  • Common furrow bee (Lasioglossum calceatum) – there are more than 1,700 furrow bees worldwide making them the largest bee genus, despite the fact they don’t conform to most people’s image of a bee – black, with a smooth elongated body, often with a metallic green or blue sheen. Measuring around 7mm, the common variety are widespread in gardens across Britain and males may roost overnight in thistles, knapweeds and ragworts at this time of year. They burrow into light soil to make their nests in large aggregations.
  • Small scissor bee (Chelostoma campanularum) is the smallest bee in Britain. Measuring just 4.5mm, they can easily be mistaken for a tiny, black fly or ant by the lay person, or a black furrow bee by an entomologist. The clue to which bee you are looking at is in their Latin name – campanula is the Latin for bellflowers or harebells. They frequent these flowers, and males can be found sheltering in the middle during dull weather and/or at night. Another cavity nester, they use pre-existing holes in dead wood including fence posts and plug the holes with small particles like sand grains and pebbles.  Like many solitary bees, they often nest next door to each other. ID tip: Another bee you may find sleeping in your bellflowers is the slightly bigger, browner and fluffier, Gold-tailed Melitta bee (Melitta haemorrhoidalis).
  • Common yellow-faced bee (Hylaeus communis) is one of a dozen small, (5mm) bees which are predominately black, but this species has yellow spots (the females), or triangles like a yellow mask (the males) on their face. The common variety is the one you are most likely to see in your garden because it’s not fussy about where it nests – in a variety of small cavities including manmade bee hotels if the dimensions of the tube are small enough – and it feeds on many widespread flowers. Unusually for a bee, it carries pollen back to its nest in a special stomach, called a crop, rather than on its body. If you have an observation bee box, with removal panels – so you can see what is happening in the cells the bees are creating – you will see this bee creating a waterproof cellophane-like ‘plastic bag’ around each egg and filling the bag with nectar and pollen.

How to help bees in July:

  1. Plant different flowers for different bees.  Lots of bee-friendly flowers are blooming this month including salvias, knapweeds (Centaurea nigra)  and lavenders. However some lavenders are better than others for attracting bees. Lavadula x intermedia ‘Gros Bleu’ performed best in trials at Sussex University, whereas Lavendula angustifolia is less attractive. Lavenders are good for short-tongued bees, as are herbs including Marjoram (Origanum), Anise hyssop, thyme and borage. For long-tongued bees plant Bergamot, (bee balm), Viper’s bugloss, Lamb’s Ear, salvias and shrubs like buddleia, also loved by butterflies, hence it’s common name, the butterfly bush. Many of these plants grow well in pots and planters on a sheltered patio or roof terrace in well-drained soil and they are fairly drought-tolerant. This month, I’ve already seen tiny Yellow-faced bees (Hylaeus) foraging on Fennell and Hebes, and lots of bee species on flowering thyme.
  2. If you only have a window box, scabious japonica, dwarf harebells (campanula carpatica), dwarf lavenders, Mexican fleabane (Erigeron karvinskianus) and creeping thyme (Thymus serpyllum) will look good now and feed the bees if you keep watering regularly. You could also add some trailing nasturtium and bird’s-foot trefoil.
  3. Continue to let part of the the lawn grow long (after No Mow May) for dandelions and clovers.
  4. Ditch the weed killers and pesticides. That includes spraying your roses – remember the leafcutter bees collect pieces of leaf to make their nests.
  5. It’s your last chance to put up bee hotels for Blue mason bees and Leafcutter bees. You can make a bee hotel. We recommend buying ones that you can clean out in the winter and store the bee cocoons safely in a cold, dry, dark place. We have successfully installed these bee hotels under the south-facing eaves of our garden shed. If you want to see what is happening inside a bee hotel, I would recommend investing in an observation box with a Perspex viewing window. Unfortunately, George Pilkington, who made this award-winning one for Nurturing Nature with a summer unit that allows smaller bees to nest, has now retired, so we are looking to test out some new ones before we can recommend a new supplier.
  6. Drill holes in blocks of wood – 10mm, 8mm, 6mm and 4mm diameters and up to 30 cm deep – and screw them to a sturdy support. Drill holes in existing structures such as fence posts, or dead trees. See if small scissor bees or yellow-faced bees take up residence.
  7. Create a sand bank against a south facing wall for mining bees that like to burrow into sand.
  8. Provide a source of water for thirsty honeybees. This can be a shallow bowl or saucer with stones or pebbles in that the bees can stand on while they are drinking. Bees can’t swim!
  9. Buy a Field Guide to the Bees of Great Britain and Ireland if you are serious about IDing lots more bees.
  10. Start growing seeds, such as forget-me-nots, that will flower next spring.

For information on IDing and helping bees earlier in the year see my Bees to See in June blog here,  Bees to See in May blog here and Bees to See in April blog here, Bees to See in March blog here.

City bee surveys

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Ecologist, Konstantinos Tsiolis, visited 3 of Urban Bees’ City roofs in June to survey bees and the plants they are foraging on, for research he is doing for Pollinating London Together, an initiative set up by the Worshipful Company of Wax Chandlers to improve habitat for pollinators in the area.

We were both excited to see what he would find, as his research – which began last year with a pilot study of 26 sites including churchyards and Inns of Court gardens – has focused up until now on ground level sites.

DAY 1: 8TH FLOOR, BREAD STREET – we started in the blistering heat where Red hot pokers (Knifophia) and Verbena bonariensis have run riot on a rooftop garden I maintain. Honeybees and buff-tailed bumblebees were in abundance, along with a few hoverflies, solitary wasps and a fly that looks like a bee. Our most exciting find was a tiny bee I spotted flying around the self-seeded Willowherb’s (Epilobium) tiny pink flowers. Konstantinos expertly caught it in his net and gently placed it in a glass tube so we could identify it. It’s metallic green thorax glistened in the sun revealing it to be a Green furrow bee (Lasioglossum morio).

  • st helen’s IOW

This excellent photo by Ian Tew of a male is the best I could find.

DAY 2: 12TH FLOOR, 1 BARTHOLOMEW – we only installed these planters in April so most of the plants have yet to establish. We only saw a few honeybees on the white lavender (Lavandula x intermedia ‘Edelweiss‘). No bees visiting the annual poppies which have popped up from the Seedball balls, nor the. cornflowers, nor the agastache. I spied a buff-tailed on the Lamb’s ear. Let’s see if it fares better next summer.

DAY 2: 8TH FLOOR, FETTER LANE – Weil’s established garden used for client entertaining proved to be a bee oasis, despite only a third of the plants actually flowering. More will be out in a couple of weeks. I can only claim partial credit for the planting, as I have advised the gardener, Matt Bell, on bee-friendly flowers to plant to bloom sequentially from early spring to late autumn. We have also installed bee hotels and a bee observation box which is completely full.

We spotted:

  • Early bumblebee (Bombus pratorum) on thyme
  • Common carder bee (Bombus pascuorum) on St John’s wort (Hypericom)
  • 2 x Yellow-face bees (Hylaeus) – probably a male and female Common yellow-face (Hylaeus communis) flying around the fennel
  • 2 x Green furrow bee – probably male and female (Lasioglossum morio) on hebe
  • Male leafcutter bee (Megachile – not sure which type of leafcutter) – you can tell it’s male by the white moustache. We found it on hebe.
  • Buff-tailed bumblebees (Bombus terrestris) on jasmin and fennel
  • Honeybees on buddleia and jasmin and thyme

Konstantinos takes bees home if he’s not 100% sure of the species. He has 7 species here which need more accurate ID then the lens can provide.

By the end of August, he is hoping to have surveyed more than 60 sites across the City. His data will be published in a report that will aim to help improve future planting and habitat creation for bees in urban areas by showing landlords what can be achieved and how they can do it.

More information on Pollinating London Together is here.

Bees to see in June 2023

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This month you’ll hopefully see the three bumblebees and a cuckoo bumblebee, (There will also be plenty of buff-tailed and white-tailed bumblebee workers foraging, and smaller, brown common carder bees, but we haven’t included them in the June guide as we wanted to introduce you to some new faces). While the charming hairy-footed flower bees and red mason bees are no longer flying, there are five new solitary bees to try to identify instead: a new mason bee, a new flower bee, and we’ll see for the first time this year, leafcutter bees, furrow bees and one of my favourites, the wool carder bee.

Tips for IDing June bumblebees:

  • Garden bumblebee (Bombus hortorum) – sit by a patch of flowering foxgloves or honeysuckle and you will hopefully see this long-tongue bumblebee. Unfortunately they are becoming less widespread than many other large bumblebees with white tails. The way to tell the garden bumblebee apart from buff-tailed and white-tailed bumblebees is by looking at the two golden bands at the front and back of the thorax which I think makes the bee look as if it’s wearing a black skull cap. It has a third band on the abdomen.
  • Early bumblebee (Bombus pratorum) – if you see a small bumblebee (10 -13mm) with a faint red bottom and yellow stripes, it’s an early bumblebee. The male (pictured above) is particularly striking with his bright-yellow fluffy facial hairs and a stripe on his body too. This month, new queens may be emerging, along with workers and the males. Look out for them on cotoneasters, brambles, Raspberry and garden crane’s-bill (hardy geraniums). They can also nectar rob from longer, tubular flowers. They have small colonies of up to 100 bees and generally nest underground in old rodent burrows like many bumblebee species, but they can also inhabit bird boxes (like tree bumblebees (Bombus hypnourm) and nests, roof spaces and holes in trees, although I have yet to hear reports of this.
  • Red-tailed bumblebee (Bombus lapidarius) –unmissable with jet black bodies and fiery red tails of the queen and her workers, but records show that they too are becoming less widespread. I have read that they favour yellow flowers, and I did see them on a sedum’s tiny yellow flowers and the yellow part of the pink-petaled seaside daisy (Erigeron glaucus). I’d also suggest looking up at Laburnum trees drooping under the weight of yellow, pea-like flowers.
  • Vestal cuckoo bee (Bombus vestalis) – also called the Southern cuckoo bee because it is in this part of England where you are most likely to see the huge females (18mm) seeking to invade the underground nest of buff-tailed bumblebees and lay their eggs. At this time of year only small buff-tailed workers are foraging. So if you see a huge bee that looks like a big buff-tailed bumblebee, it’s more likely to be its cuckoo. Other ID tips: she has a longer white tail with yellow hairs at the base, and there are NO pollen baskets on her hind legs. (She is a female and not a queen because she doesn’t have worker bees. Her eggs hatch into females and males that are fed by the buff-tailed bumblebees worker bees who become her slaves after she takes over their mother’s nest.) Look closely and you’ll see she has only one single golden band on her thorax and another band on top of her white tail. NOTE: There are 6 Cuckoo bumblebee species in the UK. This is the most common one because its host is the most common bumblebee.

How to ID June solitary bees:

  • The Wool Carder Bee (Anthidium manicatum) has to be one of my favourite solitary bees, because they are so easy to spot with their yellow spots along the side of their chunky bodies. And if you plant Lamb’s Ear (Stachys byzantina), you are guaranteed to see them collecting the soft downy material from the underside of the leaves to line and plug their nests. Carder means to ‘tease out fibres’, and the female rolls the hairs into a ball as big as herself to carry home to her nest which is in a ready-made hole in dead wood, cavities in wall and man-made objects. I’ve yet to see one. You may also see the larger male bees aggressively defending their patch of purple flowers for mating by attacking intruders mid air. They are armed with spikes under their abdomen that can kill their foes. As well as Lamb’s ear, they can often be seen feeding or mating around Black horehound, Purple toadflax and vetches. NOTE: Despite having a similar English name to the Common carder bee (Bombus pascuorum), they are very different. The latter is a social bumblebee.
  • Patchwork leafcutters (Megachile cenuncularis) are one of the most common leafcutter bees found in gardens. They get their name, like many solitary bees, from how they construct their nests. They cut pieces of leaf from many plants including rose and lilac bushes, honeysuckles, willowherbs, Amelanchier trees, birches and Horse Chestnut to make their nests, leaving the leaves looking as if they has been attacked by a hole punch. This leafcutter bee is much smaller (7-8.5mm) than a honeybee and a brownish grey colour. But the easier way to tell it apart from a honeybee is that they have an orange pollen brush on the whole underside of their tummy, which they have a habit of lifting up in the air while feeding on flowers. Favourites include thistles, knapweeds, burdock, Common Fleabane, Bird’s-foot trefoil and St John’s-worts and brambles.  They nest in bee hotels if red mason bees have left any tubes unoccupied. They plug the entrance with leaf later in the summer when they have laid all their eggs in a tube. If you’re very lucky, you may see a female flying with a piece of leaf as big as herself clasped between her legs. They can also nest in dead wood, cavities in walls and even occasionally in soil.
  • Blue mason bees (Osmia caerulescens) are a bit smaller (6 – 8mm) than a red mason bee (and have the same round bottom and hairs on their tummy to collect pollen. The females are black with a blue sheen. The males, which appear a little earlier, have a gingery pile on their thorax. They can also check into bee hotels, but are less frequent guests than red mason bees. Their tubes will be plugged green, with chewed up leaf. You’re most likely to see these bees on catmint, crane’s bill (hardy geraniums), knapweeds and flowering herbs.
  • Green-eyed flower bee (Anthophora bimaculata) – these gorgeous fluffy bees with their stunning big green eyes are less than half the size (6-7mm) of the more common Hairy footed flower bees (Anthophora plumipes). Their diminutive size, along with their rapid darting movement between flowers, makes them much more difficult to spot and they are largely confined to southern England, especially coastal areas and heathland where they nest in large, noisy aggregations in sandy cliff tops and the edge of costal pathways. They feed on Vipers bugloss, Black horehound, brambles, Thyme and mints including garden catmints. Listen out for the high-pitched buzz as they feed, often in groups. I’m really hoping to spot them on a trip to the Dorset coast later this month. They fly until September, so one to watch out for if you’re holidaying on the South cost this summer.  
  • Furrow bee (Lasioglossum smeathmanellum ) – there are close on 40 different species of furrow bees recorded in the UK. They are not what you expect a bee to look like – black, with a smooth elongated body, often with a metallic green or blue sheen. Measuring less than 5mm (for comparison a honeybee is around 14mm), spotting this type of furrow bee is going to be a challenge even though they are common over most of southern England and Wales. They nest in old walls and bare slopes in large aggregations and visit open-faced flowers like dandelions and daisies. At first glance you may dismiss them for some kind of fly, but flies have spindly legs and larger eyes and tend to rest with their wings open, while bees tuck theirs back.

How to help bees in June:

  1. Planting different flowers for different bees is particularly important this month when there can often be what’s called a June gap In the UK – a lull in nectar and pollen supplies as the horse chestnut trees finish flowering and trees, such as the limes, have yet to begin while spring flowers fade before summer ones burst into bloom. Try catmint (Nepeta) and cotoneaster for short-tongued bees, and foxgloves, honeysuckle, comfrey and thistles for longer-tongued bees. Research by bee-friendly plant supplier, Rosybee found that in June the yellow flowers of  Dyer’s chamomile (Anthemis tinctoria) were the best for all types of solitary bees, followed by purple Geranium rozanne ( a favourite in my small garden because it flowers until October). Viper’s bugloss (Echium vulgare) was best for bumblebees, as it produces nectar all day long, followed by catmint (Nepta racemosa – another long flowerer) and a white lavender (Lavandula x intermedia ‘Edelweiss’). Don’t forget Lamb’s Ear (Stachys byzantina) for the wool carder bees.
  2. If you only have a window box, try growing scabious japonica, dwarf harebells (Campanula carpatica), dwarf lavenders, Mexican fleabane (Erigeron karvinskianus), seaside daisy (Erigeron glaucus), and creeping thyme (Thymus serpyllum) which flower from June onwards. Water regularly.
  3. Don’t pull up weeds like Alkanet, which feed many types of bees, and continue not to mow part of the lawn (after No Mow May) to let dandelions and clovers grow.
  4. It’s not too late to install blue tit boxes for Tree bumblebees and possibly Early bumblebees to nest in. They will vacate at the end of the summer, so you may get blue tits nesting next spring.
  5. Put up bee hotels for blue mason bees and leafcutter bees. You can make a bee hotel. We recommend buying ones that you can clean out in the winter and store the bee cocoons safely in a cold, dry, dark place. We have successfully installed these bee hotels under the south-facing eaves of our garden shed. If you want to see what is happening inside a bee hotel, you could invest in an observation box with a Perspex viewing window such as this award-winning one from Nurturing Nature. Even better at this time of year is a summer unit with a variety of different sized nest blocks for many different species of solitary bee.
  6. Create your own nests for cavity-nesting solitary bees, by drilling holes in blocks of wood – 10mm, 8mm, 6mm and 4mm diameters and up to 30 cm deep – and screw them to a sturdy support. Drill holes in existing structures such as fence posts, or dead trees. See which bees take up residence over the summer.
  7. Continue to leave bare earth for mining bees to burrow into.
  8. Provide a source of water for thirsty honeybees. This can be a shallow bowl or saucer with stones or pebbles in that the bees can stand on while they are drinking. Bees can’t swim!
  9. Ditch the weed killers and pesticides – that includes all bugsprays for your roses!
  10. Buy a Field Guide to the Bees of Great Britain and Ireland if you are serious about IDing lots more bees.

Where have the solitary spring bees gone? One of my favourite bees, the Hairy-footed flower bee (Anthophora plumipes) has disappeared, along with Red mason bees (Osmia bicornis) and early mining bees.  This is because solitary bees only live for a few weeks. And the spring flying solitary bees that came out in April or before have now reproduced and provisioned their nests with pollen, so their life cycle has come to an end.  In their short life cycle they mate and then the female makes, or finds and adapts a nest in which to lay her eggs. She forages for pollen to leave in the nest for the hungry larvae which will hatch from her eggs, after she has died. When she had laid all her eggs and provisioned them with pollen, she will plug up the entrance to the nest, and exhausted from all her activities she will die on the wing. In her short life, she pollinates many flowers, shrubs and trees whose fruits, seeds and nuts are food for birds and other species. After eating all the pollen, the bee larvae spin a cocoon, pupate and transform into adult bees through metamorphosis. They overwinter in the cocoon and will emerge next spring to start the life cycle again.

Bees to see in March (and the bee imposter!)

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If you’re new to bee spotting, now is the month when you can begin. If you’ve been waiting all winter to get back to bee spotting, now’s the month to resume on dry, warm, sunny days.

In March, these are our three most common species of bumblebee:

  • The Buff-tailed (Bombus terrestris) is one of our most common and largest bumblebees. The queens – measuring up to 18mm – are hard to miss with their gold coloured stripes on their big black body and a buffish-coloured bottom.
  • The Tree bumblebee (Bombus hypnorum) queen (14mm) has an intense ginger thorax and a white tail. Unlike other bumblebees, she lives high up in holes in trees and walls, even colonising bird boxes when the chicks have fledged.
  • The Early bumblebee (Bombus pratorum) queen is much smaller (13mm) and prettier with her fluffy yellow collar and orangey bottom. Bu the end of the month her brood may have developed into adult, worker bees and will be out foraging instead of the queen. They are a smaller version of the queen. At just 10mm, they are the smallest bumblebee you will see.

(A rarer bumblebee, but flying at this time of year, is the white-tailed bumblebee (Bombus lucorum). She looks so similar to the Buff-tailed bumblebee in size and stripes, but the best way to tell them apart is that her stripes are more yellow rather than a dirty gold colour.)

The queen bumblebees are either looking for a place to nest (most nest underground in old rodent holes, which is why you may see them flying close to the ground), or they have just found a good location and laid some their eggs, and they are out collecting nectar and pollen to take home to feed their developing colony of workers.

Four solitary bees:

  • Hairy-footed flower bees (Anthophora plumipes) are often mistaken for bumblebees because of their round, fluffy appearance, but they live alone (not in colonies). The brown, male hairy-footed flower bees emerge a few weeks before the females. They visit pulmonaria and other flowers with bell-shaped flowers sucking up the nectar with their long, straw-like tongues (proboscis) to build up their energy for mating when the females appear.
  • Red mason bees (Osmia bicornis) – the males can emerge toward the end of the month if it’s warm to feed on blossoming fruit trees and shrubs. If you have a bee hotel you may see these cavity nesting bees checking out of the mud-plugged tubes. They are a little smaller (12mm) than a honey bee (14mm), more gingery and have a rounder bottom.
  • Gwynne’s mining bee (Andrena bicolor) is a bit harder to spot, being 6-8mm, but look down and you may see them burrowing through soil on south-facing banks. Although solitary, they nest next door to each other underground in burrows in large aggregations, so hundreds could emerge at the same time. But don’t worry, solitary bees don’t sting! The males are small (6-7.5m) and black, while the female (pictured above), which may not be out until next month, have a reddish-brown pile on the top of their thorax and hairy pollen brushes on the back legs.
  • Orange-tailed mining bee (Andrena haemorrhoa), also known as the early mining bee, is a slightly bigger solitary bee (7-9.5m). The males are brown with a dull brown fluffy thorax and tiny orange hairs at the tip of their bottom. You may see them emerging from holes in garden lawns, parks, playing fields – anywhere with light soil in a sunny spot. A little pile of spoil around the hole is a sure sign of a nest for most mining bees, and like Andrena bicolour they nest next door to each other, so you may see lots of them together. You may see the males on dandelions, blackthorn, willows and gorse. The females are much more striking with their rusty-red pile of hair on their thorax, but you’ll have to wait until next month to see them.

How to tell a male Andrena bicolor apart from an Andrena haemorrhoa?

With difficulty! Andrena bicolor males are darker (black in colour), smaller (6-7.5m) and less hairy. Andrena haemorrhoa males are brown, a little bigger (up to 9.5m), and bit fluffier on the thorax, and of course the tip of their bottom is orange, hence their common name. They forage on the same blossoming trees, flowering shrubs and spring flowers such as wood anemone, dandelions, lesser celandine, and even daffodils, and bluebells later in spring. And they nest in very similar locations. So, good luck (FYI haemorrhoa is pronounced He/more/rower.)

Why are only the male solitary bees around this month?

The males emerge earlier than the females because they need to build up their strength for mating when they girls appear. They will seek out sources of nectar to give them energy, patches of flowers which could make good mating grounds, and will often buzz around nests waiting for the ladies to check-out.

Honeybees?

We’ve not included honeybees in our Bees to See in March guide because they are managed bees, and we are focusing on identifying and helping wild bees. But you will see honey bee (Apis mellifera) workers (10mm) this month for sure because they leave the hive when temperatures reach around 13c. Shaped like a wasp, they have black and amber stripes. Look up and you will see them high up on fruit trees, pussy willows and hazel and alder collecting nectar and pollen to take home to feed their queen and thousands of hungry larvae that will develop into workers and drones.

The way to tell male mining bees apart from honeybees is:

  • size – honeybees are a bit bigger (10mm)
  • location – honeybees tend to forage in trees at this time of year, and mining bees will sometimes be nearer to the ground emerging, or looking for a nest, but they will also forage in blossoming trees
  • appearance – honeybees are more stripped, honey-coloured and are less hairy than the mining bees.
  • It gets easier to tell them apart the more you look.

Many people confuse the bee-fly (Bombylius major) for a bee (which is why we’ve included it). Not surprising, because it’s a great mimic – round and fluffy like a small bumblebee. It’s very visible in the spring, hovering around green alkanet. The easiest way to tell it apart from a bee is it’s long, spindly legs, hovering action, and two wings (bees have four wings) which stick out at a 45c angle.

If you’d like more information on the life cycle of bees and how to help them, click here for bumblebees, here for solitary bees, and here for honey bees.

You can follow Urban Bees on Twitter @BeesintheCity and on Instagram alison_urbanbees

Trees for Bees

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The best thing you can do for bees in winter is plant a tree

  1. One flowering tree can produce thousands if not millions of nectar and pollen-rich blooms, so it’s able to feed many more bees and other pollinators than wild flowers or shrubs covering the same amount of ground.
  2. Native trees will also provide leaves for caterpillars to munch on before turning into butterflies or months, and non-natives will significantly extent the flowering season providing much needed food for bumblebee queens and honeybee colonies going into winter.
  3. Few flowers are in bloom in early spring and late autumn, so trees that blossom in these months provide a vital source of energy and protein for foraging bees.
  4. Catkins on hazel and alder trees in early spring are full of pollen which bumblebees and honeybees collect to feed their brood (babies).
  5. Some solitary bees are totally dependent on one species of tree for nectar and pollen. The clue is in the name: Large Sallow Mining Bee, Small Sallow Mining Bee, Hawthorn mining bee.

My top 10 trees for bees

  1. Goat Willow (mid bottom)
  2. Hazel (top left)
  3. Cherry ‘Okame’ (mid top)
  4. Dwarf Horse Chestnut/Bottlebrush buckeye (bottom left)
  5. Chinese Privet
  6. Seven Son Flower (top right)
  7. Crab apple (bottom right)
  8. Oleaster
  9. Sweet Chestnut
  10. Strawberry Tree

To find out why they are my favourites, read my article in BQ magazine, Planting the right trees for bees

For trees that flower sequentially go to the Urban Bees Trees for Bees guide

Of course, many of us don’t have large gardens to accommodate trees, but smaller varieties, such as crab apples like Malus sylvestris ‘Evereste‘, can grow in pots on rooftops and balconies. And speak to your local ward councillor, or the councillor responsible for green spaces, to encourage them to plant more trees in streets and parks to help pollinators as well as ensuring mature trees are protected from being cut down.

Review in pictures and numbers of Urban Bees’ 2022

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1,089 subscribers to the monthly Buzz newsletter

100s of Bees to See in 2022 and 2023 calendars sold

100s of year-round bee-friendly flowers planted across London including:

Rosemary (Salvia rosemarinus) Wallflowers (Erysimum ‘Apricot Delight’) – pictured middle left with a Buff-tailed bumblebee arriving minutes after it had been planted – Lambs’ Ear (Stachys byzantina); Salvia ‘hot lips’; Hedge germanda (Teucrium x lucidrys); Sedum (Hylotelephium spectabile)

50 bee hotels made in 3 workshops for pupils and community gardening groups

30 bee hotels maintained

15 different species of bees spotted on roof top bee gardens in London including:

  • Early bumblebee (Bombus pratorum)
  • Hairy-footed flower bee (Anthiphora plumipes)
  • Davies’ plasterer bee (Davies’ colletes)
  • Leafcutter bee (Megachile centuncularis)
  • Furrow bee (Lasioglossum)

10 bee talks given – reaching more than 500 people (in person and online): including

  • CityWire’s Impact Retreat 2022 – where I explained to ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) investors why the companies they invest in need to have a pollinator strategy to safeguard bee populations for food security and to mitigate climate change
  • On UN World Bee Day, I spoke online to more than 100 staff at Bouygues construction company about why bees and biodiversity are good for business
  • More than 150 KPMG staff learned about the nature-positive steps they can take to help bees and other pollinators and why they are so important for our eco-system
  • Local Hackney residents learned about bees and how to spot them at Dalston Eastern Curve garden
  • Alison kicked off the Wild World of Bees 2022 Master Academy online class run by Canadian-based ABC Bees (middle right photo)

7 new bee-friendly terraces created at:

  • Take 2 in Fitzrovia (pictured above top right, planting an Amelanchier lamarckii)
  • Price Waterhouse Coopers in the Embankment and More London

5 articles written: including

5 roof-top bee gardens maintained at:

  • Lush London HQ in Soho (bottom right photo)
  • Bread Street and Carter Lane offices managed by Savills in the City
  • Adam & Eve Advertising agency in Paddington
  • Amazon office, near the Barbican

5 bee observation boxes installed at:

  • Adam & Eve (painted yellow, with bee hotels, pictured middle bottom row)
  • Weil law firm
  • Belgrave House, managed by BNP Paris Real Estate
  • Amazon office

5 mature, large bee-friendly shrubs destroyed by the drought

  • Rosemary bushes and Salvia ‘hot lips’ on Bread Street rooftop in the City (top left photos before and after the summer drought, without an irrigation system)

4 bee tours of Regent’s Park (

3 new clients for Urban Bees including:

  • Take 2
  • PWC

1 roof-top bee garden tripled in size from 5 to 15 planters on:

  • Adam & Eve rooftop in Paddington, west London (new planters pictured bottom left)

1 corner of a housing estate improved for biodiversity in:

  • St George Chelsea Creek housing development in south west London (thistles pictured middle)

1 All-Party Parliamentary Group for Bees and Pollinators Advisory Board joined, which advises MPs

Lessons from 2022

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  1. Orange-vented mason bees (Osmia leaiana) pictured above (Pic credit: Jeremy Early) like to nest in garden bee observation boxes and are more common than I realised. I mistook our occupant for a Blue mason bee (Osmia caerulescens) because they too chew leaves to construct and plug their nest and I thought they were more common. But when bee ID expert, Steven Falk, pointed out on Twitter the long orange fur on the underside of her abdomen, it was clear that she was an Osmia leaiana.
  2. Common yellow-faced bees (Hylaeus communis) like to use the smaller holes in the observation box. It’s fascinating they way they create a cellophane-like sac to protect the brood.
  3. Red mason bees (Osmia bicornis) hardly used our bee hotels this year. The tubes were clean, they were positioned in the same place (under the eaves of the shed facing south). Perhaps the early drought played a part, or maybe they found somewhere better.
  4. Hairy-footed flowers bees (Anthophora plumipes) didn’t nest in my lovingly constructed DIY cob bricks. Either they weren’t sheltered enough from the rain, or else they just have other good places to nest in old walls as there are a lot of old buildings where we live. I will try again next spring, with better shelter.
  5. I’ve still got a long way to go to improve my ID skills.
  6. Red hot pokers (Knifofia) are one of the most drought-resistant plants. I was surprised that salvia ‘hot lips’ and rosemary aren’t but they where stretched to their limit – the roots were in shallow soil (20cm) and there was no rain for weeks and weeks and scorching sun and heat.
  7. All rooftop gardens need a timed irrigation system even if the plants are drought tolerant as so few will survive the weather conditions we experienced in London this spring and summer.
  8. More lessons to come

Sian’s bee project

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Planting bare root trees in the foothills of the Rhinog mountains

Sian writes: “I came late to bee obsession, but when it hit, it hit hard. After an epiphany watching a bee feed during the first lockdown, I’ve spent the majority of my time and energy trying to make the four acres of land my husband and I own in the foothills of the Rhinog mountains, in North Wales, into as much of a wild bee paradise as I can. We’re in a fortunate position here, located close to riparian corridors, temperate rain forest and two Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs).

Creating a clover meadow on the four acre land

What this has meant in practice has been being covered in mud daily, my arthritis screaming at me to stop, trying to make bee habitat and provide fodder.  The soil is thin and acidic, the winds frequent and strong. We’ve planted native hedging, established two stumperies, dug two ponds, increased the plant diversity onsite, and withdrawn some of the land from grazing. It’s often felt frustratingly slow to me, and I am humbled daily by just how much I don’t know, and just how resilient and determined the bees are. This years, it’s been a joy to watch a variety of bee species feeding on our plants from early spring to the the end of October.

Common carder bee on Viper’s bugloss Three carder bees on a flower

I came to understand the critical importance of accurate bee identification over the last year, because without it, I can’t know which bees the land is supporting or what is successful in what we’re doing. To gain ID skills, and also to know what to provide, I’ve needed to immerse myself in sources of information I trust. Chief among them has been Professor Dave Goulson’s work, the Bumblebee Conservation Trust, Bee, Wasp and Ant Recording Society (BWARS) and of the Urban Bees newsletter and calendar. The newsletter has been hugely helpful, especially for a newbie in the throes of coming to understand how to use larger reference books for identification. It’s much easier to assimilate succinct, clearly presented information that is seasonally relevant. Alison and Brian ’s books have also given wonderful focus and context. “

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Is the bee spotting season over?

OK, so most bees don’t fly at this time of year, but there’s a chance you could still get to see four species flying when it’s mild and sunny. So get out in the garden or your local park on a bright, autumnal day and head for any flowers and shrubs still in bloom. And with so few bees to choose from at this time of year, it should make it easier to identify the ones you do see.

Tips for IDing November bumblebees:

  • Buff-tailed bumblebees (Bombus terrestris) – these fluffy, golden-striped bumblebees are the ones you’re most likely to see between now and March, especially if you live in a city in the south of the UK where the queens produce a third brood that lives through the winter, taking advantage of winter-flowering shrubs in parks and gardens. As a result, you’ll see queens, workers and males flying throughout the year. The queens are easily recognisable from their huge size (18mm) and distinctive buff coloured bottom. The workers are much smaller (13mm) and have a white tail. Both of these castes are female and what really sets them apart from the similarly marked 14mm males, is the brightly-coloured blobs of pollen they may be carrying on their hind legs to take back to the nest (see worker pictured above) . Further north, you may still see a queen buff-tailed bumblebee stocking up on nectar and looking for a dry, secure place to spend the winter, from which she will emerge in early spring.
  • Common carder bees (Bombus pascuorum) – you may see the odd one or two of these cute brown bees on anything that’s still flowering at this time of year . They will be the queens (15mm) having a final nectar feast before bedding down somewhere snug for the winter months such as a pile of old leaves, or under the garden shed.

How to ID November solitary bees:

  • Ivy bees (Colletes hederae) – If you’ve not yet seen an ivy bee, there’s a chance you may if ivy is still flowering where you live. But hurry, they are on their last legs. Once the adult female bees have laid all their eggs, and provisioned each one with pollen from the ivy flowers, their six to eight week life cycle is complete. To spot one, look for an insect with a fluffy ginger pile on top of its thorax (though it may be a duller brown by now) feeding on the last tiny white ivy flowers. It’s the fluffy thorax that sets the 13mm ivy bee apart from honey bees (check the guide above) and hoverflies (See our Is it a bee or a hoverfly? guide.)

How to ID honey bees:

Western honey bees (Apis millefera) – we’ve included these managed bees because they are still stocking up on nectar to take back to their hive before the winter. They may be on the last ivy flowers and are around 14mm long with a slim, tapered gold and black stripy body. They can be easily confused with other stripy insects: the slightly smaller ivy bee and the less hairy hoverflies that are still flying.

How to help bees in November:

  1. Cosmos, Penstemon, Fuchsia, salvias, dahlias and Geranium Rozanne are all still flowering but most bees don’t fly in the colder months . So now is the time to make you garden, roof terrace, patio or other outside space bee-friendly for the spring when they will emerge. If you only do one thing, plant those crocus bulbs you’ve been meaning to get in the ground before it gets too hard. Plant them under trees, in lawns and hanging baskets, and pots, as well as flower beds. They will give the early flying bumblebee queens food to fuel their flight next spring.
  2. For bee-friendly November window boxes, Cosmos and Mexican fleabane (Erigeron karvinskianus), are still blooming. And again, add lots of crocus bulbs for a colourful display in early spring that will feed the bees.
  3. If you’ve decided which tree you could add to your garden to provide bee food, now is the time you can order it and plant a tree, while trees are dormant during late autumn and winter. Also, speak to your council tree officer about planting more bee-friendly trees in local streets and parks. Trees can provide an abundant source of food at times of year when bees may be going hungry like early spring and late summer. For advice on which tree to plant see our Trees for Bees guide. Some bee-friendly trees grow very well in pots, including small fruit trees such as crab apples (Malus sylvestris ‘Evereste’).
  4. Divide bee-friendly perennials that have become overcrowded. Find another place for them in the garden or give them away to friends and neighbours to make their gardens more bee-friendly.
  5. Seeds to grow under glass this month including wild cornflower, cowslip, poppies and Pink Hawk’s Beard (Crepis rubra) – a new hardy annual I’ve just come across which looks a bit like a pink dandelion . Yellow rattle can be grown outdoors and is useful if you are trying to convert part of your lawn into a wild flower meadow as it supresses the grasses and will allow the wild flowers to grow.
  6. It’s tempting to give your garden a thorough tidy at this time of year after the autumn leaves have fallen. But it’s best to leave your garden a bit messy: piles of leaves and bits of old, rotting wood as queen bumblebees and other insects may find them perfect winter habitat.
  7. Clean out your bee hotels and bee boxes for solitary bees and store the bee cocoons in a dry, cool place over winter. Read here for more information.
  8. If you live in a milder part of the UK, it’s worth planting winter-flowers shrubs, such as Mahonia, and perennials, such a Hellebores, to feed buff-tailed bumblebees who fly all year round. More information on flowers here and shrubs here.

There will be plenty more jobs we can do over the winter months to help bees thrive next spring. So, look out for future posts each month.

For information on IDing and helping bees earlier in the year see my  Bees to See in October blog here, Bees to See in September blog here, Bees to See in August blog here,  Bees to See in July blog here, Bees to See in June blog here,  Bees to See in May blog here and Bees to See in April blog here, Bees to See in March blog here.

Bees in autumn

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If you’ve still not seen an Ivy bee, get out this month while it’s still warm and dry in many parts of the UK and stand patiently by a buzzing ivy bush in the autumnal sunshine. This is where you’re likely to see them feeding on the tiny, white, pin cushion-like flowers for nectar and pollen, alongside slightly bigger honeybees that they can easily be confused with. Just to make it harder, they will be joined by heaps of stripy hoverflies. The photos above and the ID tips below are designed to help you tell a ivy bee and honeybee apart. And our Is it a bee or a hoverfly? guide should help distinguish both from their hoverfly mimics.

Also observe bees on later flowering blooms, such as Salvias, Michaelmas daisies, Fuchsia, Helianthus ‘Lemon Queen’, Cosmos and Penstemon. Some will be the longer-tongued Common carder bees whose ginger tufts will have probably faded to straw. Small workers and larger Queens will be flying, along with Red-tailed bumblebee queens, and ubiquitous Buff-tailed bumblebees. And tiny furrow bees may still be seen.

My best advice to you this month is the same as I give every October; make the most of any mild, bright autumnal days to get out and spot many of the last bees of 2022.

Tips for IDing October bumblebees:

  • Common carder bees (Bombus pascuorum) – the workers will often sport a faded ginger/brown thorax that looks more straw-coloured at this time of year. They will often be seen foraging on Helianthus ‘Lemon Queen’, Michaelmas daisies and Salvia ‘hot lips’ in my garden, alongside new, more vibrant looking queens and males stocking up on nectar before the winter. The queens are the largest (15mm) and the workers the smallest (11mm). Despite its English name, which derives from its behaviour of teasing out (carder is the old fashioned word for teasing out) bits of moss to cover its nest, it is a social bumblebee, hence its Latin Bombus tag.
  • Red-tailed bumblebees (Bombus lapidarius) – one of my main disappointments of bee spotting again this year was how few of these gorgeous velvety black bees with their fiery red bottoms I’ve seen in my garden or local parks in east London. However, I did spot some of the pretty, yellow-faced males so there must be queens around. Anyway, be on the look out in these last few weeks for the new generation of large queens (17mm) who will now be mated and will be feeding on nectar to build up their fat reserves to see them through their dormant state during winter.
  • Buff-tailed bumblebees (Bombus terrestris) – these white bottomed bumblebees with golden stripes are so successful that if you live in the south of the UK you are likely to see this species flying all year. This month, the huge queens (18mm) may be supping on ivy nectar alongside the other bees. In the south, they will be looking for a nest to produce a brood that lives throughout the winter. Further north, they are more likely stocking up on nectar before their dormant period and will appear early next spring to nest.

How to ID October solitary bees:

Ivy bee (Colletes hederae) – If there is one thing you should do before the end of the bee spotting season, it’s to try and see an ivy bee. Why? Here are ten reasons why ivy mining bees are so special:

  1. They are the last solitary bee to emerge in the year.
  2. They were only described as a separate species in 1993 in Germany. According to bee expert, Ted Benton, the lateness of this discovery may in part be explained by their similarity to two other late-flying close relatives: Heather bees (Colletes succinctus) and Sea Aster bees (Colletes halophilus).
  3. They were first discovered in England just 20 years ago, in an ivy bush in Dorset in 2001.
  4. There is a real thrill when you see one for the first time, because it means you have learned to distinguish its features (gingery pile on its thorax and segmented shiny bands on its abdomen) from the honeybee which is a bit bigger.
  5. They only fly for around six weeks, when the ivy is flowering, so they seem more special than bees that fly all summer.
  6. If you see one north of Shropshire, Staffordshire, Norfolk or south Wales you can contribute to a mapping project to show their spread across Britain.
  7. They nest in huge aggregations of thousands of bees, making burrows in loose soil and sandy banks. It’s an amazing sight watching them emerge in late August/early September. I’ve never seen it, but I hope to create a sand bank somewhere that may become a nesting site. This video gives a flavour.
  8. Their symbiotic relationship with ivy – emerging to feed on its nectar and pollen and pollinating it at the same time – really demonstrates the connection between bees and flowering plants. This relationship has evolved over 60 million years.
  9. Watching them at work helps to connect us with nature on our doorstep. We don’t need to visit the ‘countryside’, or to far flung places, to see nature in action.
  10. They are also called plasterer bees, because like all bees with the Latin name Colletes, they line the nests they create in their burrows with a cellophane-like waterproof and fungus-resistant substance that they secret. Isn’t that amazing!

Common furrow bee (Lasioglossum calceatum) – these small black elongated shiny bees have been flying all summer. I have to admit I’m still not confident about IDing them. I think it’s the fact they are small and black, whereas I still expect my bees to be more colourful and fluffy. But I am getting better. My rule of thumb is that if it’s a small black insect with a long body on a flower late in the summer or in autumn, chances are it will be this bee. I know the yellow legs in the photo above, should help, and there are some band markings on the body, but I find these hard to see when it’s only 5.5mm.

How to help bees in October:

  1. There are still a few things flowering in the garden this month: Helianthus ‘Lemon Queen’, Michaelmas daisies and annual Cosmos grown from seed for short tongued or medium tongued bees; Penstemon, Fuchsia, Salvia ‘hot lips’ and other salvias for long-tongues bees. The shrubby blue Caryopteris x clandonensis (Bluebeard) and red Perscicaria are both visited by bees, and of course, Geranium Rozanne is still flowering. But flowering ivy is by far the most valuable nectar and pollen source at this time of year, so if you have any mature, flowering ivy don’t prune it until after it’s flowered.
  2. For bee-friendly October window boxes, try Cosmos, Mexican fleabane (Erigeron karvinskianus), and Cyclamen.
  3. Think about which tree you could add to your garden to provide bee food, or speak to your council tree officer about planting more bee-friendly trees in streets and parks. It’s best to plant trees during the winter when they are dormant.
  4. If you only do one thing for bees this month, plant as many crocus bulbs as you can in window boxes, pots, hanging baskets, flower beds and lawns, as they will provide much-need early pollen and nectar for bumblebee queens when they start flying next spring.
  5. October is a good time to divide perennials that have become overcrowded. Find another place for them in the garden or give them away to friends and neighbours to make their gardens more bee-friendly.
  6. If planting conditions are still good this month (not too cold and wet), it’s not too late to plant wallflowers. There are also some seeds that can be grown under glass this month including wild cornflower and cowslip. Yellow rattle can be grown outdoors and is useful if you are trying to convert part of your lawn into a wild flower meadow as it supresses the grasses and will allow the wild flowers to grow.
  7. Leave parts of the garden untidy as queen bumblebees may have found a nook or cranny to spend the winter and don’t wish to be disturbed.
  8. Clean out your bee hotels and store the bee cocoons in a dry, cool place over winter. Read here for more information.

There will be plenty more jobs we can do over the winter months to help bees thrive next spring. So, look out for future posts each month.

For information on IDing and helping bees earlier in the year see my  Bees to See in September blog here, Bees to See in August blog here,  Bees to See in July blog here, Bees to See in June blog here,  Bees to See in May blog here and Bees to See in April blog here, Bees to See in March blog here.

Seaside bees

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Pic credits L clockwise: Great Yellow bumblebee, Laurie Campbell; Brown-banded carder bee, Ray Reeves; Moss carder bee, Nick Withers, Pantaloon bee, Penny Metal; Long-horned bee, Catherine Mitson

The Great Yellow bumblebee (Bombus distinguendus), is one of our rarest bumblebees, only found on flower-rich machair areas around the coast in the Orkneys, Inner and Outer Hebrides, and Caithness and Sutherland where traditional crofting and low intensity agriculture means red clovers , bird’s food trefoil and other vetches are in good supply.  Bumblebee Conservation Trust is working to save the bee.

Moss carder bee (Bombus muscorum) is another rare bee also found in Scotland and the Pennines, on moors eating knapweeds and vetches. Further south it’s confined to flowery coastal marshland, like Romney Marsh in Kent where a BBCT project has brought this bleached bodied, long tongued bee back from the brink by working with farmers to plant their favourite food. Queens measure 14mm, making them the largest carder bee in Britain.

Brown-banded carder bee (Bombus humilis) is another rarity, restricted to coastal areas along the south coast of England and Wales from May to September. It also looks like it’s been spending too much time in the sun with its pale blonde body and has benefited from the BBCT project above.

Ruderal bumblebee (Bombus ruderatus) is so rare you have to be extremely lucky to catch site of it in a few isolated pocket along the south coast between Rye and Folkstone, and in Lincolnshire where red clovers still grows abundantly. Queens are a huge 18mm and look like a giant Garden bumblebee. Nine of them have been recently recorded by BBCT trust staff in central Carmarthenshire.

Pantaloon bee ((Dasypoda hirtipes) is a solitary bee you have a good chance of seeing excavating its nest, with its oversized pollen brushes, or ‘pantaloons’ in sandy banks and footpaths if you’re holidaying anywhere from Dorset to Norfolk and maybe even Wales.

Long-horned bee (Eucera longicornis) is so called because the males have what appear to be ridiculously long antennae, longer than their bodies. The females have shorter ones and can be seen foraging on clovers, vetches and legumes like bird’s foot trefoil in a few places on the south coast of England and Wales, notably Prawle Point in Devon, where a project is underway to by expand and reconnect the vital coastal habitats on which this and many other wildlife species depend. Learn more here.

Six-banded Nomad bee (Nomada sexfasciata) is our rarest nomad bee because its host bee – whose home it lays its eggs in – is so rare – the Long-horned bee. In fact, this striking nomad bee is now only recorded at the cliffs at Prawle Point. All nomad bees lay their eggs in the burrows of their host bee and then their larvae kill the host’s egg and gobble up all the food. So nomad bees can only exist if there is a healthy population of host bees.

Sandpit Blood bee (Sphecodes pellucidus) is one of 17 UK species of the cleptoparasite Blood bees which take over the nests of various ground nesting furrow bees and mining bees. They are small (5-7mm), and non-hairy, but have a distinct red segment on their otherwise black abdomen which looks as if they have been drinking blood. This one hangs out on coastal dunes and rock cliffs and heathland where its host, the brown, fluffier Sandpit mining bee (Andrena barbilabris) is commonly found.

Summer unit nesters

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L-R Orange-vented mason bee (Osmia leaianna) and Common yellow-face bee (Hylaeus communis)

We had 2 bees nesting in the summer unit bee observation box which we put up in the garden for the first time this year.

One is an Orange-vented mason bee (Osmia leaianna) who we confused for a Blue mason bee (Osmia caerulescens) . They are a similar size (8mm) and both carry pollen on the underside of their abdomen. They could both be confused for a leafcutter bee, but they divide their birthing cells and plug the entrance of their nest with chewed up leaf, whereas the leafcutter uses whole pieces of leaf. The easiest way to tell the Orange-vented and Blue mason bee apart is to observe the colour of their pollen brushes after the pollen has been deposited. You’ll see that Orange-vented mason bees have orange pollen brushes and Blue mason bees’ pollen brushes are black.

Watch some amazing footage of her in action

The other nester is a much smaller bee, the 5mm Common yellow-face bee (Hylaeus communis) – black apart from yellow marking on her face and legs. She nested in the cavity with a smaller entrance hole underneath the mason bee.

It’s amazing to be able to see 2 very different species of bee creating nests in very different ways. You won’t see pollen on the hind legs or under the tummy of a yellow-face bee because, unusually, they carry pollen back to the nest in a special stomach, called a crop and regurgitate it to make a semi-liquid mixed with nectar to feed their brood (larvae).

Left – Top right: pollen-packed cells of the Orange-vented mason bee; Middle: Orange-vented mason bee Bottom: Common yellow-face bee creating cellophane-like bags and depositing nectar and pollen and an egg in each waterproof cell.

Right: Top right: second row of eggs and pollen created by the Orange-vented mason bee Middle: Eggs have hatched into larvae in some of the Common yellow-face bee cells and she is making more cells

Orange-vented larvae developing ,

Our Orange-vented mason bee used three cavities and the Yellow face-bee one before unprecedented heat hit our garden and the adult bees disappeared. Hopefully, they had finished their work and died naturally. The summer unit was in full sun, so we’re not sure if the brood has survived or was cooked alive!

We will keep an eye on them to see if they develop further by spinning a cocoon and pupating over winter.

These summer units can be purchased from a variety of suppliers. We got ours from George Pilkington at Nurturing Nature They really do open up a hitherto hidden world.

Chelsea Creek biodiversity project – summer 2022

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In June, I cleared the site of the goose grass that had started to encroach back in April. But after downpours in May, followed by sun, it turned out that the goose grass was the least of my worries. Much of the site had been engulfed by tough, long grasses, making it difficult to walk through to check on the bee hotels and to see any bees on flowers. I did spy a cinnabar moth and a ladybird (pictured below). I decided I needed to return with reinforcements to help me pull up some of the grasses to make some pathways through…

So, a few days later myself and Alex arrived to tame the wilderness. As well as clearing some of the grass, Alex had the great idea of pruning the row of hawthorn trees to create more of a hedgerow effect. By the end of the day the sit still looked wild, but a lot more manageable. We left the huge thistles as they will attract many pollinators when they flower next month.

I returned on 1 July, to see what pollinators the thistles are attracting. There were many different species of bees, but only the leafcutter bees were on the thistles that had grown as tall as myself, if not taller. I also saw one going into a hole in a log. If she’s nesting there, she will plug the entrance with some leaf which will be visible on our next visit.

Other bees I saw on the site included:

  1. Common carder bees on the comfrey I had planted (middle photo below)
  2. Honeybees on Common wild common mallow (pictured below right) that has grown
  3. Buff-tailed bumblebees on the few brambles and buddleia that we left when we originally cleared the site a year ago
  4. Solitary bee I couldn’t ID sunning itself on a holly leaf (below left). 

I also saw a gold finch, Maybe because there are teasels growing on the site (middle photo), whose seed heads these birds will love to eat later in the summer.

I didn’t see any Wool carder bees, despite the Lamb’s ear (below left) that they use for nesting growing well from the plugs I’d planted. Sow thistle (middle photo) and chicory (below right) were also flowering.

From the outside the site looks pretty much the same as it did in July 2021 (picture below right), but there’s certainly more diversity of plants and of insects.

To find out how this project has progressed over it’s first year read my two earlier blogs from August 2021 and April 2022.

Not the Chelsea Flower Show

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Less than two miles from the Chelsea Flower Show, I am cultivating a very different kind of ‘garden’. It’s a patch of land on a luxury housing development that was so densely planted with evergreen ornamental shrubs, and overrun with brambles and buddleia that no light could get in until the developers, St George, gave us the go ahead last July to turn it into a bee haven.

I know bees love brambles and buddleia, but to boost biodiversity we had to clear much of it to give other wild flowers a chance to flourish and to provide nesting sites for solitary bees.

I wrote a blog at the start of this project on Chelsea Creek.

So how is it looking 9 months on?

We had no idea what may grow, so I was pleased to find a pretty, yellow daisy has sprung up all over the sunny part of site. It turns out to be Oxford Ragwort, (Senecio squalidus), introduced from Sicily, which is known to colonise disturbed soil along railway lines. And our site backs onto the Overground. It is harmless, unlike Common Ragworth (Senecio jacobaea), which is thought to be harmful to livestock. (Not that they are any horses here!) I didn’t see any bees or other pollinators on it, but according to Buglife, it is a good nectar source for insects.

There are a few patches of dandelions –  excellent food for many small mining and furrow bees – lots of the delicate, pink Herb-robert (Geranium robertianum) – a foodplant and nectar-source for many invertebrates including bees, hoverflies and the barred carpet moth – and stinging nettles that caterpillars of the small tortoiseshell and peacock butterflies use as foodplants. I saw some ladybirds, which feast on aphids that shelter among the nettles.

Lots of grass has grown and unfortunately Goosegrass (Galium Aparine), also known as Sticky Grass or Sticky Willy is taking over.  My research found that although its tiny flowers have been observed being visited by a wide range of insects, including various flies, small wasps, Lepidoptera, ants, bees (both short- and long-tongued) and beetles, it has also been noted that insects visit flowers only “sparingly.” Additionally, self-pollination is common due to the minute structure of the flower—“when the stigmas mature… they always touch the anthers.”

One area I’ve manged to keep clear of it, is where I planted dwarf comfrey and balm-leaved deadnettle in July. And I’m delighted to report that these patches of flowers are doing well, flowering and attracting hairy-footed flower bees and common carder bees which I was very excited to observe.

The Lambs’ Ear (above right) is also thriving in a sunnier part, so I hope to see Wool carder bees in July when they collect the hairs on the underside of the velvety leaves.

Other plants, including Rosebay willowherb, Greater Knapweed and Big betony seem to have been swallowed up by the grasses, or strangled by the sticky willy, and neither Hollyhocks, nor Vipers bugloss have yet emerged from the seeds I sowed.

We left some of the Mexican orange blossom (Choisya) shrubs, the hawthorn and holly trees, which all adorned with white flowers. I hope to see a lovely little hawthorn mining bee (Andrena chrysosceles), on it, or the dandelions, one day.

As yet, no bees appear to have checked into the bee hotels, wooden logs with holes drilled different diameters, or the sand tower block that we’ve created for them, but it’s early days.

So what next?

I planted four Common Bugloss (Anchusa officinalis), which I bought from Bee Happy Plants. It’s website says “Research points to the concentration of sugars in its nectar (61%) as being considerably higher than another member of this family also popular with bees (Symphytum officinale). Similar, though much hardier, than its annual cousin Borage. This is an ideal subject to allow to self-seed in your wild garden (each plant producing many hundreds of seeds).” It adds: “Not to be confused with its cousin Green Alkanet (Pentaglottis sempervirens) which is a well-known weed, and has perhaps also given Anchusa officinalis a ‘weed’ label by some.”

But the bees adore Green Alkanet, so it gave me great pleasure to plant two seedlings transplanted from my garden.

The Guelder rose (Viburnum opulus) it about to flower and hopefully the Bastard Balm (Melittis melissophyllum). I will return in May to clear the Sticky Willy, to observe the bees and other pollinators visiting our rewilding project, see if any have taken up residence, and observe what else is emerging through the grass…

Disclaimer: I’ve used one of Penny Metal’s photos of a Male hairy-footed flower bee on Comfrey (above) as it is so much better than my blurry pics

Shrubs for bees

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Honey bee on Mahonia; Buff-tailed bumblebee queen on winter-flowering heather (Photos: Alison Benjamin unless credited)

Many of us don’t have space to plant a tree, but what about planting a few shrubs instead? Researchers at Bristol University has found that one flowering currant (Ribes sanguineum) with 3,000 flowers provides as much nectar as 16,000 primrose (Primula vulgaris) flowers or 69,000 snowdrops (Galanthus nivalis) and that shrubs like mahonia, berberis, pieris, ceanothus, and pyracantha can be similarly nectar-rich. 

I’ve been doing my own research to put together a list of easy-to-grow shrubs that if planted sequentially would provide year-round food for bees.

As it’s December, my bee-friendly shrub suggestions start from now. Even though many will grow well in shady spots, do remember that bees prefer to forage in warm, sunny areas. As always this is not a definitive list, but designed for people who want to maximise the limited space in their garden, or pots, to feed bees all year.

December

Oregon Grape ‘Charity’ (Mahonia x media ‘Charity’ and M. x media ‘Winter Sun’) – produces cheery, bright yellow, lemon-scented flowers rich in nectar and pollen from now until March. Tough, with prickly, holly-like leaves, it does well in dry, shady spots making it a favourite of municipal planting.

Laurustinus (Viburnum tinus) – lovely flat heads of small, white flowers until April can brighten up shady spots.

Clematis ‘Jingle Bells’ (Clematis cirrhosa ‘Jingle Bells’)  –   large, nodding, scented cream-coloured flowers  are ideal for over a doorway. It needs a sunny, sheltered spot and possibly protection from harsh winter frosts.

January

Sweet Box (Sarcococca confus or Sarcococca hookeriana) – works well as an evergreen hedge. Its tiny white flowers carry a heavenly scent until March.

Winter-flowering honeysuckle (Lonicera fragrantissima) is a bushy, deciduous shrub with highly fragrant, cream flowers on bare stems until March.

Winter jasmine (Jasminum nudiflora) doesn’t have the fragrance of other jasmines, but its bright yellow flowers on bare arching branches are a welcome sight in winter.

Viburnum tinus; Witch Hazel (photo credit: Laura Ockel, Unsplash); honey bee on Winter Snow heather

February

Heathers (Erica carnea) – perfect for a rockery or small flower bed with acidic, ericaceous soil. Winter flowering specimens, include white ‘Winter Snow’ (Erica carnea f. alba ), or ‘Winter rubin’ (Erica carnea ‘Winter Rubin’) for a splattering of pink.

Winter Daphne  (Daphne odora) or Daphne bholua ‘Jacqueline Postill’   – a slow-growing medium-sized, evergreen shrub with clusters of pinkish and white flowers and an intoxicating scent in winter and early spring.

Witch Hazel (Hamamelis) –fragrant, strange-looking ribbon-like flowers hang off bare twigs in early winter. There are many cultivars with slightly different coloured flowers ranging from sulphur yellow to coppery red.

Paperbush (Edgeworthia chrystantha) – pom-pom like clusters of tiny, yellow flowers on bare branches seduce bees with their heady scent from February – April.

March

Oregon Grape (Mahonia aquifolium) – an early spring-flowering Mahonia which is more compact and less prickly than the winter-flowering varieties but with similar bright yellow bee-friendly flowers.

Japanese quince (Chaenomeles japonica)  large, bold, often bright reddish-orange flowers cover its bare, thorny stems for weeks before the leaves appear in May. Non-thorny varieties are available. It likes ericaceous soil.

Bastard senna ‘Citrina’ or Scorpian Vetch (Coronilla valentina subsp. glauca ‘Citrina’) – pretty pea-like, yellow flowers appear in early spring and are often followed by a second flush in later summer. A native of Southern Europe and Northern Africa, it will benefit from the protection of a sunny, south-facing wall.

Camellias – but only those with single-headed flowers with well exposed pollen-laden stamens, unlike the many double-headed cultivars. They need acidic, ericaceous soil.

Skimmia – an evergreen shrub that is valuable for its multi-season displays. Glossy evergreen leaves provide a lovely contrast to the fragrant white or yellowish flowers in March and April and long-lasting winter berries. Works very well in pots and prefers a position in shade as full sun can cause the leaves to turn yellow.

Japanese quince (Photo: Yoksel Zok, Unsplash); Camellia (Photo: Annie Spratt, Unsplash); Rhododendron (Photo :Padre Moovi, Unsplash)

April

Honey spurge, or Canary spurge (Euphorbia mellifera) – small, honey-scented, bonze tinted flowers are borne on an exotic looking, architectural dome-like structure.

Flowering currant (Ribes sanguineum) – clusters of pinkish/reddish tubular flowers are loved by long-tongued bumblebees and hairy-footed flower bees.

Burkwood viburnum (Viburnum × burkwoodii) – a later flowering evergreen viburnum with similar domed clusters of fragrant white flowers until May, that open from pink buds.

Darwin’s Barberry (Berberis darwinii) – an evergreen, with similar holly-like leaves to Mahonia,  but clusters of orange flowers which are a major source of nectar and pollen in early spring and again in the autumn.

Lilly of the Valley shrub (Pieris japonica) – its bell-shaped flowers are visited by long-tongued solitary bees, such as hairy-footed flower bees, and bumblebees. Requires acidic, ericaceous soil.

Rhododendron – its flowers contain low concentrations of poison for honeybees, but long and short-tongued bumblebees find the single-flowered varieties highly attractive for both nectar and pollen. Best in acidic soils. Compact varieties can be grown in pots filled with ericaceous compost.

May

Californian Lilac (Ceanothus) – a stunning evergreen small ‘tree’ smothered in clusters of electric blue flowers that buzz with bees all month in full sun.

Firethorn (Pyracantha) –the bunches of small white flowers on this spiny-branched shrub are visited by many solitary bee species, but it’s mostly grown for the profusion of showy, bright orange-red berries in autumn.

Japanese pittosporum (Pittosporum tobira) – profuse and intensely scented flowers open white and then turn yellow in April and May against the attractive large, glossy foliage of this drought-tolerant shrub.

Californian lilac (Photo: Charlotte Harrison, Unsplash); Fuchsia with bumblebee (Photo: David Clode, Unsplash); Beautyberry berries in autumn ( (Photo: Yamasa, Unsplash)

June

Cotoneasters are a great source of nectar and pollen during the ‘June gap’ – when there’s a dearth of bee food between spring flowers dying and summer perennials flowering.  Research at Cambridge Botanic Gardens found that the  clusters of small white or pink flowers of many Cotoneaster species can provide a succession of forage for short-tongued bumblebees and honeybees from May to August. Varieties include the low-growing red-berried C. horizontalis, which can be trained up walls, and  Franchet’s (C. Franchetii) which makes an evergreen pollution-tolerant hedge; and the graceful willow-leaved (C.  ‘Rothschildianus‘) which has yellow berries.

Senecio Sunshine (Brachyglottis ‘Sunshine’) – a compact, drought-tolerant, evergreen shrub from New Zealand that works well in coastal areas and has hairy, grey leaves and bright yellow, daisy-like flowers in June and July.

July

Beautyberry ‘Profusion‘ (Callicarpa bodinieri var. giraldii ‘Profusion’) Prized for its clusters of violet, bead-like berries on bare branches in the autumn, which are much-loved by birds, and its striking foliage that changes colour during the seasons. This deciduous shrub also has small pink flowers in midsummer which attract the bees.

Daisy bush (Olearia × haastii) – an evergreen drought-tolerant shrub smothered in white, daisy-like flowers with big yellow centres in July and August. Its glaucous, glossy leaves make it suitable for coastal, windy gardens.

August

Hardy fuchsias – bushy, compact shrubs with a profusion of dainty two-tone pendent flowers that the RHS describe as dangling in pairs, “like mini ballerinas with tutus”, along the stems towards the tips.  They can last well into the autumn and bring a tropical touch to a garden if planted in a sheltered, sunny spot and watered.

Bluebeard or Blue Spiraea (Caryopteris × clandonensis) – clusters of slightly fluffy, blue flowers appear in August and September on long stems among pointed, aromatic, grey-green leaves. (Although I have to admit, I’ve not had much success with this drought-tolerant shrub.)

Bluebeard (Photo: Emily Simpson, Unsplash) Buddleia (Photo: Gavin Allanwood, Unsplash) Chaste Tree (Photo credit: Griffin Taylor, Unsplash)

September

Butterfly bush or buddleia (Buddleja davidii) – buy a small cultivar of this coloniser of railway sidings for bee and butterfly visitors from July to October. Dense spikes of honey-scented, brightly coloured flowers can be encouraged by regular deadheading.

Chaste Tree (Vitex agnus-castus) – cone-shaped clusters of violet-blue lavender-looking fragrant flowers appear from July to October – if planted in a sunny, sheltered garden – on this attractive, slender drought-resistant plant with finger-like leaves .

October

Japanese Aralia (Fatsia japonica) – an autumn-flowering tropical-looking, evergreen with huge, glossy, palmate leaves for shady corners. It produces showy panicles of spherical, creamy white flowers from September right through to November.

Oleaster or Silverberry (Elaeagnus × submacrophylla) – in autumn, very small, but well-scented, creamy-white flowers open until November on this shade, drought and wind-tolerant evergreen that can be grown as a hedge.

 Fastsia Japonica (Photo credit: The Blow Up, Unsplash); Strawberry tree with Buff-tailed bumblebee queen

November

Strawberry tree (Arbutus unedo) – an evergreen, Mediterranean shrubby tree, with bell-shaped white flowers late in the year which hang from its branches unusually at the same time as its jolly, round, red fruit dangle like baubles on a Christmas tree.

Sources: RHS, Graham Rice, Buzz About Bees.net, The Garden Buzz, Dave Goulson, Gardening for Bumblebees, Pollinating London Together, BBC Gardeners’ World magazine, Addicted to bees, Urban Bees plants for bees list, Crocus.co.uk

Thanks to Diana Weir for her suggestions and help compiling this list.

London Bee Tours 2022

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Clockwise from top left: Common carder bee; buff-tailed bumblebee; leafcutter bee; honey bee; Regent’s Park apiary; Regents Park Honey (Bee Photo credits: Penny Metal)

Seeing bees in Regent’s Park

Last summer, we ran a bee tour for the Friends’ of Regent’s Park. On a warm August morning around 20 friends turned up to discover the bumblebees and solitary bees foraging in the flower beds. Equipped with our Bees to See guide, they were surprised at how many bees were buzzing in the bushes. They quickly learned how to identify common carder bees, furrow bees and buff-tailed bumblebees.

“I walk through this park practically every day, admiring the colours and scents of the flowers, but I have never before noticed the bees. Now, I will always look out for them.”

said one participant

The group also visited the bee hotels that we installed in the Regent’s Park allotment garden where red mason bees laid their eggs earlier in the summer. Here, they heard about the honeybees living in the park’s secret apiary, how these bees make honey and sampled the delicious, raw produce just harvested from the hives.

The 3-hour tour was such as success, that we have decided to run a similar tour once a month during spring and summer for anyone interested in bees.

For dates and prices of our London Bee Tours and how to book for yourself, or as a gift for friends and family, please click here

Winter reading recommendations

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Useful Bee ID guides

Field Guide to the Bees of Great Britain and Ireland, by Stephen Falk & Richard Lewington, (Bloomsbury) – this is the go to reference book that any bee spotter should have on their book shelf. It has more information than you’ll ever need to know about all our 250+ bee species, but it’s easy to dip in and out of and to find the photo, description and map for one bee and the family it belongs. And there is always something new to learn.

Insectinside: life in the bushes of a small Peckham Park, by Penny Metal – I know I’m biased because Penny is a friend and provides all the fabulous Bees to See photos, but her fantastic huge, close up photos show a variety of wild bees you’ll most likely to come across in all their splendour. The narrative is fun too. And as well as helping my bee ID skills, her book has awakened my curiosity in other invertebrates that share the garden. Check out Penny’s Flickr page too.

Bumblebees An Introduction, by Bumblebee Conservation Trust – is a simple guide to identifying and helping bumblebees with good photos, diagrams and tips. I also like their Pocket Guide to 8 Common Bumblebees, which I stick in my back pocket when doing a Bee Walk. They have ones for rare bumblebees and cuckoo bumblebees too.

Gardening for bees

There are so many glossy, coffee table, lifestyle bee-friendly gardening books. The one I like best because it’s about bees and their relationship with plants is:

Gardening for Bumblebees: A practical guide to creating a paradise for pollinators by Dave Goulson (Penguin) – He covers the more common solitary bees, as well as bumblebees. I have found the section on long-tongued and short-tongued bees particularly useful.

Introduction to bees

Most layman’s bees books are about honeybees and beekeeping. It’s only recently that bumblebees and solitary bees have got a look in. For a simple overview, I’d suggest our gift book:

The Good Bee; A Celebration of Bees and How to Save Them Alison Benjamin & Brian McCallum (Michael O’Mara) – It’s beautifully illustrated, a handy size, and an easy to read introduction for someone who doesn’t know there are so many different types of bees.

or equally

Plant Trees Sow Seeds Save the Bees Simple Ways to be Bee-Friendly, by Nicola Bradbear (Penguin) – a delightful, easy to read informative little paperback with useful tips for getting to know ‘stripeys’ and how to help them.

Nature books

Bees have been my gateway to a better understanding and appreciation of nature and biodiversity. As a result, many of my favourites reads are about more than bees:

The Stubborn Light of Things: A Nature Diary by Melissa Harrison (Faber) – a beautifully written collection of her Times nature diaries that closely observe the natural world around her over a six year period living in London and moving to Suffolk. You can dip in and dip out and always find a gem such as this from 21 October 2017: “If you live in a city and miss nature, the answer doesn’t have to be to move out: it’s to tune in.”

Wilding: The Return of Nature to a British Farm by Isabella Tree (Picador) – an amazing 20 year account of what can be achieved if we work with nature, rather than against it. The return of nightingales, storks, bees, butterflies and dung beetles.

English Pastoral An Inheritance by James Rebanks (Allen Lane) – if there is one book you read this year, make it this one. Why? Because he takes you on his journey of discovery that the farming practices he and his father’s generation adopted are destroying the land. And the embrace of nature-friendly farming by this self-declared green sceptic shows what can, and must, be done and the role we can all play.

John Clare Selected Poems edited by Jonathan Bate (Faber) – I most admit I find most poetry difficult, but earlier this year, thanks to Professor Jeff Ollerton, I discovered John Clare’s Wild Bee poem and adored his descriptions of the different bees. So when I came across this collection of poetry I thought I’d give it a go. I’ve not read many yet, but if like me you’re a fan of russet hues you’ll love his ode To Autum:

…More sweet than summer in her loveliest hours, /Who in her blooming uniform of green/Delights with samely and continued joy/But give me autumn, where thy hand hath been/For there is wilderness, that can never cloy – /The russet hue of fields left bare and all/The tints of leaves and blossoms ere they fall…