How bee-friendly is your garden?

Here are some easy steps to check how many bees come to visit and to assess your garden:

1, Once some flowers have started blooming in your garden, pick a warm sunny day when its not too windy, (bees prefer days when its above 10 degrees and calm)

2, Walk around your flowering areas slowly and look and listen

3, Try to avoid any sudden movements that will scare them away and avoid casting shadow on the flowers

o   you are looking to see which plants seem to attracting bees but - and maybe this is more important -  also look for which plants or areas of your garden are not attracting bees

o   look carefully because some bees are quite small and may look more like hoverflies.

Good bee plants should attract more than one bee at a time (unless it is a very small plant). So now you can assess the following:

Overall what proportion of your flower beds have any plants attracting bees? Are there some plants you should replace with something better?

Do you have areas where there is not much flower or the flowers dont last very long?: long flowering plants give more value to you and the bees

Is your planting scheme in bold blocks or do you only have lots of single plants? ; it may be you have the right plants but a single plant may not be energy efficient for the bees to fly to

Are your flowers in sun? ; most bees will only forage in sun although bumblebees will tolerate light shade as they are fluffy enough to keep warm

Based on the answers to these questions you can now decide what to change or just sit back and enjoy all that glorious buzzing.