Bee on borage, Mount Vernon Cancer Centre
Bee on borage, Mount Vernon Cancer Centre. Photo: Vicki Brown / Centre for Sustainable Healthcare 2021. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).

Want to help save bees that play such a huge role in our ecosystems? The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) launched a call to action for land managers large or small on 18 July 2014 to help protect bees, butterflies and other vitally important pollinators.

You can create or improve your habitats for all pollinators in five simple ways:

  1. Grow more flowers, shrubs and trees
  2. Leave patches of land to grow wild and weedy
  3. Cut grass less often
  4. Avoid disturbing or destroying nesting or hibernating insects
  5. Think carefully about whether to use pesticides

Meanwhile an NHS Forest site run by Public Health England at Colindale, which lost three of its four hives in recent years, has seen the bee population quadruple this summer, thanks to the establishment of a wildflower bank next to its allotments.

This website uses cookies. You can find out more in our privacy policy.