Hobby gardeners advertise numerous visits from wild bees in the orchard and vegetable garden. With two natural methods you can make your garden palatable to the important pollinators. You can find out how to successfully attract wild bees here.
Bamboo sticks provide a nesting place for wild bees
Attract wild bees with nesting aids
The February sun awakens the first wild bees from hibernation, which they spent in the shelter of their pupal shells. After a refreshment from early flowering nectar donors, wild bees start looking for suitable nesting sites. With these nesting aids you invite wild bees to linger in the garden:
- Fill the wooden frame with hollow stems (knotweed, bamboo, reed), fasten with clay, secure against birds with rabbit wire
- Pile up brittle deadwood as a hedge, ideally with holes drilled by beetles as natural nesting tubes
- Build a nesting aid out of old interlocking bricks
Many wild bee species prefer wood as their nesting material. You can transform a thick tree disc made of hardwood or a cut-off branch without bark into an enticing wild bee hotel in just a few simple steps. For this purpose, use the wood drill to create nest tubes with a diameter of between 3 and 10 mm at a distance of 1 to 2 cm. To prevent wild bee ladies from injuring themselves during the inspection, sand the entrances smooth and remove all chips.
Invite wild bees with gourmet plants
If a garden has the right forage plants to offer, wild bees will flock to it in droves. It is important to have a varied planting plan with native perennials, which provide plenty of food for every wild bee species. A selection of the best gourmet plants for wild bees is listed in the following overview:
- basic rule: plant native wild plants with single, single flowers in a bee-friendly garden
- wild bee meadow: Scatter wild bee pasture seeds or sow Veitshöchheimer bee pasture
- For Silky Bees (Colletes): daisy family (Asteracea), tansy (Tanacetum vulgare), golden yarrow (Achillea)
- For Mason Bees (Osmia): Fabaceae, lilies (Liliaceae), violets (Viola), willows (Salix)
- For fur bees (Anthrophora): mint family (Lamiaceae), for example dead nettle (Lamium maculatum)
Various wild bee species have specialized in a single plant species as a source of food. These include the bluebell sawhorn bee (Melitta haemorrhoidalis) with a soft spot for the clustered bellflower (Campanula glomerata).
tips
Did you know that bumblebees are wild bees? Together with mason bees, sand bees and other wild species, the fat buzzards do more than 90 percent of the pollination work in the garden. As the only wild bee species, bumblebee queens set up a small colony shortly after the end of winter. Wild bumblebees are magically attracted to early flowering perennials such as lungwort (Pulmonaria officinalis), mountain knapweed (Centaurea montana) or common heather (Calluna).