The best plants for bees and pollinators
Set up a ‘nectar café’ by planting flowers for pollinating insects like bees and butterflies
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Give bees (birds, bats & butterflies) a chance
Filling your garden, green space, pots or window boxes with plants that flower at different times is a brilliant way to provide pollinators with year-round food. Plus, it’ll give you colourful…
Bee wolf
One of our largest and most impressive solitary wasps, the bee wolf digs a nest in sandy spots and hunts honey bees.
Honey bee
Honeybees are famous for the honey they produce! These easily recognisable little bees are hard workers, living in large hives made of wax honeycombs.
Red mason bee
The red mason bee is a common, gingery bee that can be spotted nesting in the crumbling mortar of old walls. Encourage bees to nest in your garden by putting out a tin can full of short, hollow…
Bee orchid
The bee orchid is a sneaky mimic - the flower’s velvety lip looks like a female bee. Males fly in to try to mate with it and end up pollinating the flower. Sadly, the right bee species doesn’t…
Ivy bee
The ivy bee is a new arrival to the UK. First recorded here in 2001, it is slowly spreading north. It feeds mainly on the nectar of ivy flowers and can be seen in autumn when this plant is in…
Red-tailed mason bee
Also known as the two-coloured mason bee, this beautiful bee is famous for nesting in old snail shells.
Common carder bee
The common carder bee is a fluffy, gingery bumble bee that can often be found in gardens and woods, and on farmland and heaths. It is a social bee, nesting in cavities, old birds' nests and…
How to make a bee hotel
Solitary bees are important pollinators and a gardener’s friend. Help them by building a bee hotel for your home or garden and watch them buzz happily about their business.
Broad-bordered bee hawk-moth
The broad-bordered bee hawk-moth does, indeed, look like a bee! A scarce moth, mainly of Central and Southern England, it feeds on the wing and can be seen during spring and summer.
Patchwork leaf-cutter bee
The appearance of semi-circular holes in the leaves of your garden plants is a sure sign that the patchwork leaf-cutter bee has been at work. It is one of a number of leaf-cutter bee species…