Home

Shop pages

  Shop
 
Post & Packing
 
How to Order
 
Catalogue
 
Contact

Info pages

  Birds
 
Invertebrates
 
Animals
 
Plants & Trees
 
Projects
 
Photographs
 
Links
 
Wildlife Diary
 
Webcam
 
Forum

Educational Discounts

 

 Terms & Conditions   Register   Log in   Shopping Cart   Product Search

Bumble Bees

  • Bumble bees have been in decline for many years.
  • They are essential pollinators of many flowers and fruits and can be used commercially to increase yields.
  • Bumble bees will only string when threatened by extreme danger and are non aggressive.
  • True bumblebees make small nests of a few dozen cells in holes in the ground, tufts of grass or nestboxes.
  • Only fertilised queens survive winter to start a new nest the next year.
  • Colonies range from about 20 to over 200 workers.
  • They search for nectar and pollen from flowers.
  • They have hairy pollen sacks on their back legs
  • Like mammals, their hairy bodies keep them warm allowing them to forage earlier in the year, and earlier in the morning and at higher altitude than other bees.
  • Bumble bees will often nest in old mouse nests and cannot resist the smell, so the best way to attract them to a Bumble bee box is to add old mouse nesting material.

Flowers for bumblebees

 March - April

  • Apple
  • Bluebell
  • Broom
  • Bugle
  • Cherry
  • Erica carnea (heather)
  • Flowering Currant
  • Lungwort (Pulmonaria)
  • Pear
  • Plum
  • Pussy Willow
  • Red dead-nettle
  • Rosemary
  • White dead-nettle

May - June

  • Alliums
  • Aquilegia
  • Birds-foot trefoil
  • Bugle
  • Bush vetch
  • Campanula
  • Ceanothus
  • Chives
  • Comfrey
  • Cotoneaster
  • Escallonia
  • Everlasting Pea
  • Everlasting wallflower
  • Foxglove
  • Geranium
  • Honeysuckle
  • Kidney Vetch
  • Laburnum
  • Lupin
  • Monkshood
  • Poppies
  • Raspberries
  • Red Campion
  • Roses (singles)
  • Sage
  • Salvia
  • Thyme
  • Tufted vetch
  • White Clover
  • Wisteria
  • Woundwort

July - August

  • Black horehound
  • Borage
  • Bramble
  • Buddleia
  • Cardoon
  • Catmint
  • Cornflower
  • Delphinium
  • Heathers
  • Hollyhock
  • Hyssop
  • Knapweed
  • Lavender
  • Lesser burdock
  • Marjoram
  • Mellilot
  • Mint
  • Penstemon
  • Phacelia
  • Polemonium
  • Purple loosestrife
  • Red bartsia
  • Red clover
  • Rock-rose
  • Sainfoin
  • Scabious
  • Sea Holly
  • Snapdragons
  • St. Johns Wort
  • Sunflower
  • Teasel
  • Thistles
  • Viper’s bugloss

Find out more about Bumblebees and join in the nest box trial at
The Bumblebee Conservation Trust

...and find out more at.....


You can encourage Bumble bees into your garden by planting pollen rich flowers, such as thistles and aliums and by making or buying a Bumble bee box,

Bumble bee boxes are available to buy from our online shop

See our full range of bug houses and attractants....


 


Photographs ©

Galloway Web Design
Affordable web design for Dumfries & Galloway and beyond

Wildforms, Keepers Cottage, Glenstockadale, Leswalt, Stranraer, Wigtownshire, DG9 0LU
email:
pete@wildforms.co.uk Telephone: 01776 870453