Wild bees need wild flowers for pollen and nectar. They add pollen to their eggs to feed young bees as soon as they hatch. Nectar on the other hand serves as fuel for flying back and forth.
Eighty percent of our edible crops depend on pollination by bees and other insects. Pollination is needed to transfer genetic material, ensuring healthy new plants and thus providing food for animals. Wild bees are therefore crucial for the production of all our food.
Since there are fewer and fewer flowering wild plants, the wild bees are not doing well. Wild bees can only fly for 250 meters until they have to refuel on a flower.
For this reason, the following wild flowers were planted here, in a ribbon through the polder along the waterfront to create a road of nectar: yellow marsh roll clover, purple water mint, white meadowsweet and pink loosestrife. These plants also bloom at Fort Ruigenhoek.
With the help of this bee oasis, the wild bee can fly again here!
Wild bee: 330 species, flight distance up to 250 meters, small solitary all-rounder.
Bumblebee: 30 species, flying distance up to 1000 meters, largest wild bee, most of which are endangered.
Honey bee: 1 species, flight distance up to 3000 meters, the only bee that makes honey and lives in large colonies, with queens, workers and drones.
Did you know that…
…bees hardly ever land on annual flowers such as poppy and cornflowers? Do you want more bees and bumblebees in your garden? Then provide perennial native flowering plants, such as snowdrops and crocuses in the spring, herbs such as marjoram, thyme and chives in the summer and autumn asters in the autumn.
…some bees only search for one type of flower? The loosestrife bee only likes the pollen from… the loosestrife. Bumblebees, honeybees and other wild bees also relish this important flower.
…the number 1 flower for most insects is the dandelion? Please hold your lawn mower put for a while if you want to help the wild bees!
…most wild bees put an egg with pollen in a hole in the ground? You can spot these holes between tiles or on a sandy piece of ground. Bumblebees build their nests underground and often use mole tunnels for their nests.