I was very happy to receive for Christmas this year a Beebomb by my lovely Bee conscious (not a pun) parents! Sounds terrifying, though not as much as a Waspbomb would be. In fact it is a great way of making it easy to plant small scale meadows anywhere. Pots, hanging baskets and containers, window boxes or patches of garden. Anywhere with decent sunlight and with even the poorest of soils. Exciting times!
I've grown some small scale meadows myself in the past and in the main, they performed well, but they did require me to buy more seed than I needed and to sow with a margin more care than these Beebomb need, so I'm excited to give them a go. So shortly, I will be sowing some mini meadows of native wildflowers (click here to see the mix of species included) to test the Beebomb and help our struggling bee communities. Click here to visit Beebombs.com
While it seems unlikely that you won't know why, I think it best that I briefly highlight the need to help bees more now than ever. Bees are an integral part of the human food chain and incredibly valuable plant pollinators in general. While the old adage attributed to Albert Einstein (though he probably didn't actually say it) of 'If the bee disappeared off the face of the Earth, man would only have four years left to live.', is actually not true, it would be a terrible thing for plants that utilise bees as pollinators, for a number of our food crops and for our souls as a principle catalyst in their decline.
Many fruit trees and bushes benefit from bee activity in ensuring pollination and so their significance in ensuring that we are well fed is without doubt. British Apple, Pear, Cherry, Plum and other top fruit stocks are dependent on bees to pollinate them. That represents literally millions of Apples grown in the UK commercially each year. 42% of apples in UK shops and supermarkets are grown in the UK (2017), which seems depressingly low considering our skill in this sector. In the UK, in 2017, we produced in the region of 141,600 tonnes of Apples alone (click here for British Apples and Pears website for source data), all of which benefit from pollination by bees and other beneficial insects. No mean feat at all, especially from an insect that has seen populations decline by as much as one third in the UK over the last decade.
Images of Meadow flowers above courtesy of Beebombs.com
While we are talking a lot about Honey Bee species here, all bees are struggling and on a global scale as a result of pesticide poisoning, pollution, unhelpful agricultural practises and pest and diseases. Click here to go to the friends of the earth bee identification webpage.
So, something must be done to help our little buzzing friends. We can all do our bit and while it may seem a little, the cumulative effect can be great.
I'll be planting my Beebombs soon and will update you on my progress during the growing season.
Drop back in during the summer to see how well my experiment goes.
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