7 ways to help bees

By this point in time, you’ve probably heard about how the humble bee is in a lot of trouble and if the humble bee gets into a lot of trouble then humans do too, because we need them for food, in fact the whole world needs them for food.  The good news is that you can help, especially if you have a garden, but even if you don’t.  As a minimum you can spread the word about what individuals can do to get the bees back.  Here are 7 ideas.

Grow pollen-rich flowers

You can now buy bee-friendly flower seeds, but essentially most wildflowers are rich in pollen and therefore good food for bees.  If you’re not keen on filling your garden with wild flowers, try poppies, cornflowers or sunflowers.  Even if you don’t have a garden, you can still help out the bees by planting flowers in containers.

Let you lawn show its wild side

Personally, I have never had a problem with flowers like daisies and dandelions growing in a lawn.  I actually think they look nice and bees love them.

Go organic

You wouldn’t want to eat or drink chemicals, bees don’t either.  Even if you can’t go completely organic, at least do your best to minimize the amount of chemicals you use, they could, literally, be poisoning bees.

Put out safe drinking water

Bees need pollen for food and water to drink. Putting out water can be a big help to them, just make sure to do so in a way which is safe for children (and adults) and other animals, for example, use a bird bath, which is high enough up for children and other animals not to trip on it or fall into it.

Buy a bee house

Honey bees live in hives but there are lots of other species of bee out there which don’t, but which do carry out the important task of pollination.  Bee houses (or bee hotels as they’re sometimes known) are really affordable and great places for bees to live.  Remember, unlike wasps, bees are very docile and avoid stinging because it kills them.

Use honey as a sweetener and/or beauty product, if at all possible, buy local

For the record, I’m not advocating putting honey into everything.  In terms of nutrition, honey is essentially a sugar and as such should be used with caution, however, most of us do use sweeteners to some extent and using honey in preference to other sweeteners gives preserving bees extra economic value.  Buying local is to be encouraged (no pun intended) for all kinds of reasons and in this particular case, there is an extra reason to do so which is that honey made locally may help to protect against seasonal allergies.  Honey is also valuable as a beauty product as is royal jelly.

Support a bee-friendly charity

A quick internet search will probably reveal several bee-friendly charities which work in your area so see what you can do to help them.  For example, they may take the standard charity donations of cash and old items or they may sell items you could use or gifts with the money going to preserve the bees on which we all depend.

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