DIGGING IT
of the rest, though they aren’t particularly important pollina- tors in Europe. Their mostly nocturnal cousins the moths are more numerous and a little more important as pollinators; pollinated by them. Then there are the 256 different UK spe- insects, many mimicking bees or wasps, bees. On top of these there are numer- pollinate. It has been estimated that there are at least 4,000 species of pollinators just in the UK; nobody has calculated a - ceed 100,000 species. All of these insects are important; each tends to visit differ- to come and go in different years. If we and crops are properly pollinated into the future, then we’d be wise to look after all of these little beasts as best we can. Worryingly, our wild pollinators are in
(which includes all pollinator species) on nature reserves fell by 76% between 1989 and 2014. The modern world poses many threats to wild insects:
These early queens will look to build nests, often in old mouse holes in the ground
“ ”
trouble. Some wild bumble bees have declined dramatically, with three going extinct in the UK. Franklin’s bumble bee, a native of California and Oregon, is now almost certainly globally extinct, having not been recorded since 2006. But-
than it once did, with almost all of our plowed up in the twentieth century. Her- bicides enable farmers to grow weed-free are often contaminated with insecticides. On top of that we have accidentally in- troduced new parasites and diseases from abroad that attack both honey bees and our wild, native bees. Fortunately, it is not all doom and
gloom – we can all get involved in looking after bees and other wild pollinators, for they live all around us. Every beekeeper knows the importance of planting the grow bee-friendly plants in their garden
if they have space – borage, phacelia, honeywort, comfrey, marjoram, thyme and so on. All of these are also good for our wild bumble bees, and often for some of the solitary diversity of insects, from bees to tiny parasitic wasps to but-
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