Why Are Bees Good For The Garden?

“The hum of bees is the voice of the garden.”
Courtesy of Elizabeth Lawrence

As gardeners, we know that bees play an important role in our gardens and should consider them our best friends. This is why good gardeners always encourage bees to visit and thrive in their gardens, as they are key to pollinating the plants they grow, resulting in bountiful harvests. 

Let’s take a brief look at why bees are good for the garden:

• Support A Healthy Ecosystem.
• Improve Genetic Diversity.
• Increase Yields Of Fruits & Vegetables.

Bees Support A Healthy Ecosystem

A healthy ecosystem is one that is balanced, diverse and resilient, an environment where plants, animals and microorganisms can thrive together and adapt to change. Bees are classed as one of the key species for maintaining a healthy ecosystem, as whilst they actively forage for food and water, they transfer pollen, enabling the reproduction of flowering plants, which then provide food and shelter for other insects, birds and wildlife. As such, bees can be classed as ‘environmental engineers’ that help to sustain entire habitats. 

Your garden benefits from the work of these buzzy ‘engineers’ as the plants and seeds sustained by bees provide food and habitats for other garden wildlife, including birds, butterflies and predatory insects which help to naturally control pests population in your garden. 

Bees Improve Genetic Diversity

Bees not only maximize diversity within their own colonies, their busy pollination activities help to drive the variation of the plant ecosystems which surround them. As bees forage they carry out a behaviour known as ‘flower constancy’ which means they focus on one specific plant species per trip. This means that as they transfer pollen grains between plants they are being delivered to a compatible mate even over long distances preventing localised breeding whilst improving reproductive success and seed genetic health. 

By having a range of different bees visiting your garden, bumblebees, honeybees and solitary bees, this demonstrates that you have a thriving ecosystem and should result in your garden being full of colourful, vivid and gloriously scented blooms throughout the various seasons. 

Bees Increase The Yields Of Fruits and Vegetables

Research shows that bees are responsible for pollinating over one third of global food production, sometimes referred to as the ‘1 in 3’ rule. Bees improve the yield of 87 of the world’s 115 top food crops. Just starting at the beginning of the alphabet, bees boost the yields of almonds by up to 60%, their activity improves apple production by between 60 to 100% together with improving the shape and marketability of the fruit and avocados which rely heavily on honeybees and bumblebees have yields boosted by 15 to 24% compared to natural self-pollination. As a result, without bees busily doing their work we could lose up to a third of our fruits, nuts and vegetables. 

This means that if you like to grow edibles in your garden including beans, berries, cucumbers, courgettes or tomatoes, then bees will play a vital role in larger yields, more uniform production and plentiful crops. 

So now we know how important bees are to our gardens, let’s take a look at some of the questions we get asked and how we can help support these buzzy engineers.

How Can I Encourage Bees Into My Garden?

To ensure bees find your garden a welcoming location, there are a range of things you can do throughout the year, from providing food and water to setting up places that they can nest. This means that the best place to start is to select flowers that provide bees with a succession of nectar-rich blooms to feed on from spring until autumn. One of the easiest ways to do this is to find a specially selected mix of seeds designed to attract bees, such as our Seedball Tin.

With the bee ‘food’ sorted by selecting the correct flowers to grow in your garden, it’s also important to remember that as bees are active in your garden they need to stay hydrated and as bees cannot swim then they can often drown if trying to land on bird baths. So to create a safe location for bees to hydrate you can create a dedicated water station by simply using a shallow container, such as a plant pot saucer, covering the surface with pebbles and then filling half way up with rainwater, leaving the tops of the pebbles dry. Positioned close to your specially selected bee flowers, tucked into the shade the bees will find it and safely land on the pebbles to access the fresh water easily. 

With food and water now provided, let's take a look at shelter for the buzzy workers. 

Should I Get A Bee House?

Sometimes called ‘bee houses’ or ‘bee hotels’, these are quick and easy to add to your garden and as long as you place them in the correct location and select a good quality bee house, then you will be providing the visiting bees, like red mason bees and leafcutter bees, with somewhere they can nest. Key elements of a good bee house or bee hotel include tubes with diameters ranging from 2 to 10mm housed in a weather-protected structure made from clean, untreated materials. 

Where Is The Best Place To Put My Bee House?

Once you have selected a bee house for your garden, make sure you site it correctly. Ideally, it needs to be positioned between 1 and 1.5 metres above the ground so it’s safe from ground predators (such as mice, hedgehogs, badgers and foxes) as well as away from the noses of curious dogs or cats. 

When using a hanging bee house face the house south or south-east so that it receives direct sunlight in the morning to help warm up the larvae as it develops, ideally in a sheltered location so it won’t move in high winds. 

How To Encourage Bees To Use A Bee House?

It’s really important when placing your bee house that it's close to nectar-rich, bee-friendly flowers. Mason bees will be attracted to spring flowers like Crocus, Grape Hyacinth, Primroses and Lungwort. Whilst leafcutter bees will be looking for blooms appearing in mid summer including Campanula, Cosmos, Lavender, Knapweed etc. 

What Other Ways Can We Help Bees? 

Whilst we can make our gardens a haven for visiting bees, another way in which you can help bees when out and about is to carry a ‘Bee Revival Kit’.

If you see a slow or grounded bee on a hot day it could be suffering from dehydration. To help it get its ‘buzz’ back, providing it with sugary water will help, and this has been made easy for you with the popular ‘revival kits’ which include a vial of ambrosia bee food syrup supplied ready to use and conveniently attached to a keyring, so it’s easy to keep with you. These kits, pioneered by the UK-based company Beevive, which was featured on Dragons’ Den, also make the perfect gift for your gardening friends who appreciate the importance of bees. 

Want To Know Even More About Bees? 

“If we understand bees. We understand how nature works.”
Courtesy of E O Wilson 

We’ve provided you with just a little bit of information about bees, but if you want to find out more for yourself, then we have several books all about bees:

We hope that you have enjoyed learning a little bit more about these buzzy engineers and that we have given you some ideas about how to make your garden more welcoming to bees! We’d love to hear from you if you have any questions or would like to tell us all about how you encourage these prolific pollinators to help you around the garden.

"Anyone who thinks they're too small to make a difference has never met the honey bee."

Keep buzzing! 🐝