With No Mow May ending, many of us will be itching to get our hands on that lawnmower and give our green spaces a tidy. As a beekeeper I’m hopeful that the month of restraint has given gardeners across Scotland some inspiration to relinquish a segment of lawn for something more pollinator friendly. But what to plant?
The UK has lost 95% of its wildflower meadows since the end of WWII and right now lack of forage (food), and pesticide use, are the biggest threats to our bee populations. With over 250 different bee species we have a beautifully diverse range of pollinators, but they are seriously under pressure.
While many Scottish farmers are attempting to reverse the industrialisation of our green spaces by replanting heritage hedgerows and trees, leaving space for wildlife and adding field strips of flowering plants such as phacelia, the great Scottish Garden remains an untapped and overlooked eco resource.
We do love a lawn, and their connotations in our cultural psyche run deep. Introduced by 17th Century landowners, they were a visualisation of extreme wealth. Over the years, in parallel with the demise of the wildflower meadow and the growth of the supermarket, our gardens have slowly turned from vegetable plots and chicken runs to aspirational flat green spaces.
During the pandemic many of our local councils stopped mowing verges and roundabouts to find that, after only a single summer, they became a riot of colour and buzzing insects. Residents loved the new look, and the diversity, and there was a good deal of online chatter about reducing costs and making the changes permanent.
But there were also negative comments. Not everyone likes the ‘natural’ look and some thought it messy and untidy. Perhaps if your gardening style is slightly more organised, simply yanking up a section of lawn and throwing down some wildflower seeds is not for you!
The beekeeping season here in Scotland is short – even shorter the further north your location - and this is the same for all pollinators. They hide away from our damp, winter chill to emerge on sunny days around Easter, and then start to disappear as the days shorten in early October.
There’s also the issue of the ‘June Gap’ - essentially a gap in flowers as the spring blooms go over and summer flowers kick in. Not as much of an issue in Scotland, it is usually more noticeable on the south coast of England but it does happen.
In Scotland we can often have a ridiculously warm end to March which gets our insects flying, only to find there is very little food in the way of pollen and nectar. Things start to get going in April but harsh winds can strip the blossoms before they’ve made much impact. By May, we are in business.
As trees and flowers everywhere vie for attention, June, July, and usually August are great months. Things start to trail off in September as it may be warm in the sun but often cold at night. October signals the end of the year and once we are into November the bees generally stay clustered inside the hive working together to keep warm although they will go further afield if the temperature stays warm.
Attuned to the tiniest changes in our environment, bees sense the days getting longer in spring and, after the winter solstice, the worker bees begin to feed the queen bee to stimulate egg production. Laying only small amounts she slowly builds up over the weeks until she reaches her peak of 1000 eggs a day by late spring. The year has begun and, 3 weeks after an egg is laid, a fully formed bee will hatch.
As the colony grows in size it begins to deplete its winter store and they begin to forage outside the hive.
For bees, flowers mean food. For the gardener, bees mean the tranquil buzz of summer and your vegetable patch increasing its yield due to free pollination!
When creating your planting plan try to think sequentially so that there is always something flowering as your garden or green space moves through the year.
Once they’ve found a good food source, worker bees will return to that plant again and again, visiting around 100 flowers per trip (and 15-20 trips a day!) so drifts or swathes in your border are a great idea.
Bees’ eyes are different from ours and they can see in ultraviolet which means that blue, purple, and white flowers are most attractive to them. Often, they will see flowers as two-tone with glowing ultraviolet on the edges and dark in the middle, guiding the pollinators to the bounty. Red looks black and is mostly avoided.
It is important to keep things simple. Bees like open ‘single’ flowers where the prize can be easily claimed. Snapdragon shaped flowers and many showy varieties knows as ‘doubles’ need serious work and even burly bumblebees often have to bore a hole in the petal to get in. Smaller bees will not even try and will move on.
Choosing plants can be daunting but there is a wealth of resources out there to help you ensure that you get the most out of your investment, with information on the correct soil, and placement for maximum plant health. Some garden centres use ‘Bee-friendly’ tags to make it even easier to choose plants for pollinators.
Many modern blooms have been bred to be eye catching for us humans but bees have little interest. So if your garden is small and you can only fit in a few different species, opt for ones that flower for a long time to maximise them as a pollinator food source.
The reintroduction of wildflowers and hedgerows IS happening across Scotland but it is a slow progress and we have a long way to go to get back to pre-war levels (if we ever can). By keeping bees and pollinators in mind and choosing wisely for our own gardens we can make a huge difference to their survival.
Gael Wilkinson is the Keeper of Bees at the award winning Fife based Kin Bees. Find out more about her brightly coloured bee hives at www.kinbees.com, or follow the bees @kinbeesuk.