Bumblebees
There was an article in The Independant about bumblebees and the problems they are having. Apparently 3 UK species have become extinct and 5 and getting there. You can’t actually read the whole article without paying so I will kind of summarise here from what I can remember and what I have found out.
You can support the Bumblebee Conservation Trust by joining it here. If you join you will receive a regular newsletter, a bumblebee identification poster, a pack of wildflower seeds, a sticker and a first edition bumblebee pin-badge.
It’s fairly straightforward to attract more bees by planting certain plants in you garden the BCT has more information about which plants to use. It seems that planting native wildflowers is one of the key things to do the BCT provides a list and links to suppliers of these seeds. Looking at their ‘garden flowers’ list I was quite pleased to see that I already have a few planted out including lavender, sage, marjoram and I have recently started off some sunflowers. Apparently they like rosemary and last night when I got home there were two a three bees buzzing around the thyme we have in the back which is currently flowering.
If you want to know what kind of bees are visiting you garden the Natural History Museum has provided this handy bumblebee identification guide .
One last thing if you suffer from hay fever a good reason to keep bumblebees around is that apparently if you eat locally produced honey it will relieve your hay fever. I don’t suffer from hay fever so I cannot verify this but I would be interested to hear from anybody who has!
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