Simple Ways to Support Bees in Your Garden

Bees are among the most welcome visitors to any British garden, and they repay our hospitality many times over. As they move from bloom to bloom collecting nectar and pollen, they pollinate our apples, courgettes, raspberries and runner beans, often lifting yields far beyond what we would manage without them. Yet bees face a tough time in modern Britain. Wildflower meadows have vanished, hedgerows have been trimmed back and many gardens have been paved or gravelled over. The good news is that even the smallest plot can become a genuine refuge. You do not need an acre of countryside or a beekeeper's suit, just a little thought about flowers, water and shelter.

Plant for a Long Season of Nectar

The single most useful thing you can do is to make sure something is in flower from early spring right through to late autumn. Bees emerging from winter dormancy in March are desperately short of food, and bumblebee queens will be founding new nests by April. At the other end of the year, ivy in October is a lifeline for late-flying honeybees and red admiral butterflies. Try to have at least two or three plants in bloom in every month between February and November.

Good early choices include hellebores, crocus, winter honeysuckle and flowering currant. As the year warms, aim for foxgloves, comfrey, borage, lavender, catmint, salvia, hardy geraniums and thyme. In late summer, sedums and dahlias come into their own, followed by asters, Japanese anemones and sedum spectabile. Single-flowered varieties are nearly always better than doubles, because the extra petals crowd out the nectar and pollen that bees actually need.

• Spring: crocus, hellebore, pulmonaria, flowering currant, apple blossom
• Early summer: foxglove, comfrey, borage, chives, thyme, sage
• Midsummer: lavender, catmint, salvia, sweet William, poppy
• Late summer and autumn: sedum, dahlia, aster, Japanese anemone, ivy

Clustering plants in generous drifts rather than dotting them singly around the border makes foraging far more efficient for bees, which tire quickly when they have to fly long distances between mouthfuls.

Leave a Wild Patch

Perfection is overrated in a wildlife garden. A strip of lawn left unmown through the summer will soon fill with clover, dandelion, selfheal and buttercup, all of which bees adore. If you can bear it, mow just a single path through the long grass and let the rest grow tall. The result looks deliberate rather than neglected, and it costs you nothing but a little restraint. Dandelions in particular are one of the most valuable early nectar sources in Britain, so treat the first flush as a crop rather than a weed.

If you have room, a small patch of annual wildflower seed sown in spring will provide colour and food for a single season. Yellow rattle can be sown into rough grass to weaken the grasses and let flowers through. Even a large pot of mixed wildflower seed on a patio will pull in bees from surprisingly far away.

Provide Shallow Water

Bees need to drink, though they cannot manage deep water and will drown quickly if they cannot climb out. A shallow dish, a saucer from an old terracotta pot, or a birdbath with a gently sloping edge all work well. Place a few pebbles or corks in the water so that bees can land safely and sip without falling in. Refresh it every day or two in hot weather, and site it near the flowers so that bees do not have to travel far.

A damp corner of the garden helps too. Honeybees use water to dilute honey and to cool the hive, and mason bees use wet mud to seal their nest cells. A small patch of bare, moist earth beside a water butt or downpipe is a simple and valuable addition.

Be Careful with Chemicals

The most important rule here is simple: never spray an open bloom. Even products marketed as bee-friendly can harm bees if they land on flowers, because bees will collect the chemical along with the pollen. If you must treat a pest, do it in the evening when bees have stopped flying, and choose a plant that is not in flower. Better still, build up natural predators by tolerating a little aphid damage and leaving ladybirds and hoverflies undisturbed.

Weedkillers on lawns and paths are worth avoiding as well. Clover and dandelion are not the enemy in a bee-friendly garden, and a slightly ragged lawn is a small price to pay for a garden buzzing with life.

A Few Extra Touches

Shelter matters as much as food. A south-facing hedge, a dry-stone wall, or a bundle of hollow canes tied together and hung in a sunny spot will give solitary bees somewhere to nest. Most of our British solitary bees, including the charming red mason bee, nest in hollow stems or small holes in wood rather than in hives. Leave a few dead stems standing over winter instead of cutting everything back, and you will be doing them a considerable favour.

Above all, be patient. A garden rarely fills with bees overnight, but within a season or two you will notice more and more of them, and the fruit, vegetables and flowers around them will improve accordingly. Small changes, made thoughtfully across many gardens, add up to something remarkable.