St Albans Pottery
Join Fiona Booy at St Albans Pottery
Bee Wild is a community initiative which combines creativity and ecology by boosting the number of wildflower pollinators across the district through a series of clay & Wildflower seed projects.
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Our Pollinators' Plight
We hear and see that the bees are in trouble and they are facing multiple problems. The loss of wildflower meadows, too much mowing of lawns and verges, imported pests and diseases, pesticides, modern laboratory designed plants that produce no pollen or nectar. The list goes on and on…
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Why is this important? the majority of plants we use for our food and our medicines are pollinated by insects and one of the biggest colonies we see during the summer is the honeybee.
For example, a bumblebee nest starts with one queen bee in the spring but in the summer might be 300 to 400 bees. A honeybee colony might be 25,000 bees in winter but 50,000 or 60,000 bees in summer!
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How we can help
You can plant plants that the bees enjoy like wildflowers or old traditional plants that the bees will love. If you have a corner of your garden you can let run riot, all sorts of wildflowers will appear -and you can help this along by planting them. We could all mow a little less leaving grass and verges longer to let the flowers bloom and if you are looking for plants look specifically for the Plants for Pollinators label with the bumblebee on it.
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So, you do not have to be a beekeeper to keep bees! Plant them some wildflowers and they will come to you. Fantastic if you can plant a whole meadow or corner of your garden but even better if everyone planted a window box because just like 50,000 bees, 50,000 window boxes make a big difference.
How to get more involved
There are several amazing local organisations with lots of tips, advice, help and actions to make our local area a better place for all. These include:-
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