Don’t Step on a Bee Day

Day 40 of 365 Days Wild was Don’t Step on a Bee Day! Here are some of the bees that I managed to avoiding stepping on whilst I wandered around the meadow.

Here’s are a few little factoids to pass on to those strange people who only care about something when it has a financial impact.

According to a 2018 UK government report, the UK’s 1500 species of pollinators add between £400 and £680 million to crop value each year. If there were no pollinators doing the job for payment in nectar and pollen, crops as varied as apple, brocolli, leak, and raspberry – more than 1/3 of all crops – would have to be pollinated by other means. These would be either labour or machinery intensive, and undeniably expensive.

Bees are key pollinators and everything possible needs to be done to help them out. Since 1900 the UK has lost 13 of its species of bee and a further 35 are considered to be endangered. Since 1970 nearly 50% of our insect species have gone extinct and 41% of those remaining are endangered. These are very worrying numbers.

Pollen producing plants and wildflowers need to be encouraged to grow in gardens, on road verges, at field edges, and in meadows. Use of pesticides needs to be avoided wherever possible and reduced to the absolute minimum.

Here are some of the other pollinators also spotted in the meadow yesterday.