I love standing under a tree in full blossom in the spring and listen to its petalled crown simmering with the buzz of thousands of bees.
Every year on 20 May, we celebrate international bee day, a day that was set up by the United Nations to appreciate and protect bees and pollinators. And I certainly think that the sound alone of buzzing bees is worth protecting!
Honey bees tend to attract most of our attention. We value them for their ability to produce that sweet elixir that we adore on toast or in yoghurt. And we admire them for living and working together in a crowd of a rather socialist and feminist character!
Did you know that we have a unique black bee living in Wales? Whereas native black bees have disappeared from the rest of Britain due to illnesses and crossbreeding with other bee species, the Welsh ones survived. Earlier this year a hive of black bees were moved temporarily from the roof of Plas yn Rhiw in Llŷn during restoration works. Having lived there for over a century, there is a clause in the deeds of the house that forbids house owners to disturb them!
However, only some bees live in hives of up to 50,000 individuals. Most bees are solitary and often live underground and bore tunnels into old wood where they lay their eggs. They all suffer from the effects of insecticides and the degradation of our fields and grasslands, as well as the lack of nectar and pollen. Some bee species depend completely on one genus of plant to feed their larvae, and that makes them especially vulnerable when the number of plant species is in decline.
It could be argued that bees are the most important species to protect in our age of climate and biodiversity emergencies. Not just honey bees, but all insects that pollinate our crops and wild flowers, including wasps, moths and butterflies, flies, hoverflies, and even bats. Three quarters of our food crops depend on pollen to succeed and on thousands of pollinators to produce seeds and fruits. It is no wonder that their economic importance is substantial and that our future depends on them.
You can grow plants that are attractive to pollinators in your garden or in a community garden, to increase the food available to them. Here’s a wildlife gardening guideline .
If you’d like to know more about bees and pollinators in your area, have a look at the Caru Gwenyn scheme. Or come on the Gwreiddiau Gwyllt project’s walk on 9 June 2024 in Cwm Idwal with the National Trust warden to see the bilberry bumblebee, a bee that specialises on heather uplands.
The Heritage-Lottery funded Gwreiddiau Gwyllt project is collecting Welsh-language nature resources to create a database which will be available to the public online at the end of the project. And remember that you can search for species names in Welsh or English on the Llên Natur website.