06/07/2021
*This is a long one but please stick with it and read on to the end, it's an important and serious issue we face*
Here we have a honey bee about to feast on what can only be described as a buffet restaurant for pollinators...a field of lavender!
This photo was taken a year a go at a local lavender farm, but even in the garden I've seen honey bees, bumble bees, carpenter bees, as well as butterflies and moths, all landing on their favourite flowers and tucking into the nectar and pollen. I've talked about this topic before, but we need to do all we can to make sure the bees and other pollinators thrive in a world that has reduced their numbers and made it harder for them to survive.
Wild flower meadows have near enough been eradicated to allow arable farming to take place and houses to be built, people are replacing grass lawns with AstroTurf, councils chop down "weeds" on the sides of roads because they look messy. All of these things are contributing to the numbers of insects to decrease. Do you remember seeing all the bug splats on your or your parents car windscreen 10 or 20 years ago? Not now! At least not in the numbers I remember anyway. But there is hope.
This year I have seen lots of roadside verges full of wild flowers with signs saying they're for the bees. Farmers are starting to create wild flower borders in their fields to help the pollinator population recover. And more and more people are turning parts of their gardens into a haven for all kinds of wildlife. You don't even need a garden, just a plant pot with some bee friendly plants in them.
WE can do our part in helping the bees and insects, and if we all do something, even the smallest thing, then that all adds up to a fairly sizeable change.
have recently covered this so I'll leave a link below for anyone who wants to find out more of how they can help, and please do consider doing something; at the very least you'll make your outdoor space look and possibly smell that much nicer 🏵🌺🌼🌸🌻🐝
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/B0cXHn3Z2p0lv45vpwqg39/designing-your-bee-friendly-garden-what-you-need-to-know
