Bees And Wasps Are Free Eco Friendly Garden Workers!
These little critters will eat 100′s of garden pests and help to pollinate 1000′s of plants.
By encouraging these little understood bugs into your garden could really improve your success in the plant world, helping to kills off pests, help generate seeds and fruits throughout the year.
So lets find out about these very different little insects and see what they can do for us – and what we can do for them.
Bumble Bees:
These are the first things we think of when we talk about bees, and we often see them in the garden as a big, furry bumbling bee, humming loudly as it moves through the plants in our yards.
Bumble Bee
These bees are not kept in hives and actually live in holes in the ground, compost heap, disused bird houses or old trees. At the end of the summer the queen is mated and heads of alone to live out the winter before producing offspring the following spring.
She generates plenty of offspring and a colony could number up to 300 individuals as it lives out the summer feeding on and pollinating our garden plants and trees.
They have a sting, but rarely use it.
Honey Bees:
These are the ones that are kept in hives and produce plenty of honey – which bee-keepers use for human consumption. They don’t need human intervention and can make their own hives in trees and roof spaces if necessary.
They are similar in shape and size to wasps rather than bumble bees, but don’t have the pinched-in ‘waist’ of the wasp.
They always live in large colonies and cannot survive alone for very long. They can, however, travel and arrive in your garden in a huge swarm of up to 20,000 individuals! Quite a site to witness as they settle as one writhing mass on a tree or building.
They are rarely ever dangerous to humans unless you antagonise them – although they will sting you. Experts can be called in to move the swarm quite easily to a less populated environment if you don’t want quite that many in your garden!
Solitary Bees:
The other types of bees live in loose groups but do not swarm or form colonies.
They are similar in appearance to honey bees, and can be used commercially to pollinate crops just like the more popular honey bees.
There are about 250 types on solitary bees in the UK, and many live in small holes in the ground but stay close to other solitary bees spread out over some distance.
Wasps:
Although they send us into a fear frenzy on site due to their habit of stinging us – they can be very beneficial to your garden or allotment.
The queen will set up a nest of mushy paper and fibres in the spring and start to produce larvae to build up her colony – which can reach 20,000 in a few weeks if the conditions are excellent!
Intricate Wasps Nest In Trees
Adult wasps eat nectar and sugary liquids, but they feed their young on insects, so can be seen feeding off plants and killing aphids too! 1 worker wasp could catch around 100 aphids a day off your plants to feed their young.
However, if the colony becomes too large the adults may require more natural food than your garden can supply and so they will turn to other sources – like our kitchen for jams, bee hives for honey etc. and this is when they come into conflict with humans.
But as with all the different bees, if you can tolerate them around your homes and gardens you can get yourself some free insect control and some free fruit and flower generation!
So what are you doing to encourage them to your garden?