Wild bees get into trouble in winter. There is a lack of winter quarters and food sources for the cold season. Hobby gardeners who are close to nature do not want to stand by and offer invaluable assistance. This guide explains how wild bees hibernate and what help wild bees really get in the hobby garden.
Insect hotels offer wild bees space to breed and overwinter
How do wild bees overwinter?
More than 500 wild bee species are native to Germany. Of these, 95 percent live as loners. Unlike gregarious honey bees, wild solitary bees do not form colonies. This way of life requires a sophisticated survival strategy for the winter. This is how wild bees overwinter in Germany:
- egg laying: mated female lays her eggs in individual brood cells
- brood care: Storing food supplies in the brood cells, closing the entrances or building partitions
- hatcheries: hollow plant stalks, boreholes of native beetles, tree cavities, crevices in walls, underground nests
- wintering: Development from egg to pupa before winter, overwintering as an imago in the pupa
- end of winter: In spring they hatch from the pupa as well-fed wild bees
Bumblebees are wild bees. As the only species, the yellow-black, hairy brummer establish a small colony for one summer. Only young queens that have mated survive and overwinter with a thick pad of fat in the garden soil, preferably in abandoned mouse nests.
What helps wild bees overwinter?
A packed package of measures is available when hobby gardeners devote themselves to the protection of wild bees. Gardening close to nature sets the course. Effective individual measures are aimed specifically at wild bee species. Wild bees are happy to accept this help for the winter:
- Sow special bee pastures for wild bees as a food source for the food supply in brood cells
- Leave dead plant stems until spring
- Build a dry wall with moss-covered joints and cracks as winter quarters
- Hang up nest boxes for wild bees
- Tolerate molehills, do not remove abandoned mouse nests
- Do not move the compost heap from late summer
- Creating a Benje hedge made of old wood with holes drilled by beetles
Many wild bees are in need because they can no longer find their forage plants. In the worst case, the storage chambers of the brood cells are not full and the offspring must starve to death. Plant German chamomile (Matricaria recutita) for the humpback bee (Collet es daviesanus). The common hole bee (Osmia truncorum) is happy about field marigolds (Calendula arvensis). Dead nettles (Lamium maculatum) make the hearts of all fur bees (Anthrophora spec.) beat faster.
tips
A bee-friendly garden benefits all bees. The best glutton plants for wild bees and honey bees are native wild flowers, wild perennials and wild fruit bushes. Where cornflowers (Centaurea cyanus), dog roses (Rosa canina) or cornelian cherries (Cornus mas) thrive, the table is richly laid for the buzzing buzzers.