How to actually help bees

Ranked by effect

1. 1Provide nesting habitatThe most neglected and among the most effective. Around 70% of bee species nest in the ground and need bare, sunny, undisturbed soil. Most of the rest need hollow stems, dead wood or soft mortar. Almost every garden has flowers and no nest sites.
2. 2Flower across the whole seasonNot a bee-friendly plant in June, but continuous forage from February to November. The gaps — late winter, the midsummer lull, October — matter more than the peak.
3. 3Stop using insecticide on flowering plantsFree, immediate, and the single easiest change most people can make.
4. 4Support habitat protectionUnimproved grassland, heathland and brownfield land hold far more species than any garden. This is where the rare bees are.
5. 5Let some of the garden goLong grass, a patch of bramble, dandelions left to flower in April, seedheads standing over winter.
6. 6Buy honey from local beekeepersThis supports beekeeping, which is agriculture. It is a good thing to do and it is not bee conservation.
7. 7Keep beesAlso agriculture. In areas of high hive density it can make things worse for wild bees.

Nesting, in practice

• Leave a south-facing bank or patch of bare soil unmulched, unplanted and undisturbed. This is what ground-nesting bees need and it looks like neglect.
• Leave dead wood, old fence posts and beetle-bored timber in place.
• Cut perennial stems in late winter, not autumn, and leave some standing all year — hollow and pithy stems are nest sites.
• If you put up a bee hotel, include tubes from 2 mm to 10 mm. Most commercial hotels only offer 8 mm and miss the small specialists entirely.
• Clean or replace bee hotel tubes every year or two, or the hotel becomes a disease reservoir.
• Do not use landscape fabric across whole beds, and avoid artificial grass entirely.

Flowering across the season

Things that do not help as much as people think

• Bee hotels alone. Useful, but they serve cavity nesters — a minority — and do nothing for the 70% that nest in the ground.
• Sugar water for tired bees. A grounded bumblebee in spring is usually a queen resting, not starving. Sugar water is a reasonable intervention for a genuinely exhausted bee and a poor substitute for flowers.
• Wildflower seed mixes containing non-native annuals. Attractive and short-lived; a perennial meadow with yellow rattle does far more.
• Bee-friendly labels on double-flowered cultivars. A double flower has had its stamens bred into petals and offers nothing.

If you have space

The highest-return interventions at any scale are the ones that restore structure rather than add plants. A hedgerow allowed to flower, a meadow established with yellow rattle to weaken the grass, a strip of ground left bare and sunny, a pond margin, a log pile. All of these support nesting and overwintering as well as foraging, which is what distinguishes a habitat from a feeding station.