In winter, wild bees are in distress. There is a lack of winter quarters and food sources for the cold season. Hobby gardeners who are close to nature do not want to stand idly by and provide invaluable assistance. This guide explains how wild bees overwinter and what help in the hobby garden really works for wild bees.
How do wild bees overwinter and how can you help them?
Wild bees overwinter as pupae and imagos in hidden brood cells such as hollow plant stems, cracks in walls or tree hollows. Home gardeners can help by providing food sources, leaving plant stems and creating nesting opportunities.
How do wild bees overwinter?
More than 500 wild bee species are native to Germany. Of these, 95 percent live as loners. In contrast to social honey bees, wild solitary bees do not form colonies. This way of life requires a sophisticated winter survival strategy. This is how wild bees overwinter in Germany:
- Egg laying: mated female lays her eggs in individual brood cells
- Brood care: storing food supplies in the brood cells, closing the entrances or building partitions
- Breeding places: hollow plant stems, boreholes of native beetles, tree hollows, wall gaps, underground nests
- Overwintering: Development from egg to pupa before winter, overwintering as an imago in the pupal shell
- End of winter: Emerge from the pupal shell in spring as well-fed wild bees
Bumblebees are wild bees. The yellow-black, hairy brummers are the only species to found a small colony for a summer. Only mated young queens survive, which overwinter in the garden soil with a thick pad of fat, preferably in abandoned mouse nests.
What helps wild bees overwinter?
A packed package of measures is available when hobby gardeners dedicate themselves to protecting the species of wild bees. Natural gardening itself sets the course. Effective individual measures are aimed specifically at wild bee species. Wild bees are happy to accept this help for the winter:
- Sowing special bee pastures for wild bees as a food source for the food supply in brood cells
- Leave dead plant stems until spring
- Create a dry wall with moss-covered joints and cracks as winter quarters
- Hang up nesting boxes for wild bees
- Tolerate molehills, do not remove abandoned mouse nests
- Do not turn compost heaps from late summer onwards
- Creating a Benje hedge from old wood with drilled holes from beetles
Many wild bees are in distress because they can no longer find their food plants. In the worst case, the storage chambers of the brood cells are not filled and the offspring have to starve miserably. Plant chamomile (Matricaria recutita) for the humpback silk bee (Collet es daviesanus). The common hole bee (Osmia truncorum) is happy about field marigolds (Calendula arvensis). Dead nettles (Lamium maculatum) make the hearts of all fur bees (Anthrophora spec.) beat faster
Tip
A bee-friendly garden benefits all bees. The best gourmet plants for wild bees and honeybees are native wildflowers, wild perennials and wild fruit bushes. Where cornflowers (Centaurea cyanus), dog rose (Rosa canina) or cornelian cherry (Cornus mas) thrive, the table is lavishly set for the buzzing hummers.
