Bee Friendly to your Garden Bees Review
On Sunday 9th October 2011, ETNet held a talk with a local Solitary Bee expert in St Denys Community Centre. The event was a great turn out with some fascinating information on Solitary Bees provided by our Solitary Bee expert. The talk started with a brief history on Solitary Bees, with some great audience participation.
The talk mentioned about how important it is that we do something to protect the bees. In June, ETNet showed ‘The Vanishing of The Bees’ at The Point, Eastleigh, which explained some of the reasons why experts think the bees are vanishing. So to encourage more bees, we were shown how we can use ordinary (used/recycled) materials to make a Bee Nest:
October is the best time to collect prunings of ‘pithy’ soft-centred twigs to make a Solitary Bee Nesting Habitat.
- Find a container at least 6 inches long. Old oddments of drainpipe are ideal, plastic drinks bottles or best of all make a simple wooden box to put your twigs into.
- Cut twigs a little shorter than the depth of your box etc.
- Bundle them together with an elastic band – to make it easier to tie them better with garden wire.
- Take a skewer/narrow screwdriver and make a hole in the centre of each twig..as far down the twig as you can manage… leave at least a quarter of an inch as an ‘end stop’.
- If using drainpipe – get some garden wire 2 and a half times the length of the pipe. Thread it through the pipe and knot together above the pipe to make a hanger.
- Put your bundle of sticks inside – packed tightly.
- Hang at a slight angle so that rain does not flood the nesting holes – outside or in shed ready to put in garden early spring. Hang so that the nesting holes are SOUTH FACING – bees need morning sun to warm them up…don’t we all!
It should be made clear that bees need the flowers to be attracted to the garden FIRST! To help with this, The Co-Operative provided us with wildflower seeds! The Co-Operative also provided us with small fluffy bees!
Big thanks to O2 Think Big, The Co-Operative, Bay Leaves Larder and St Denys Community Centre for helping to make this a fantastic event!
