There are more than 500 wild bee species in Germany, many of them are threatened. In contrast to honey bees, the majority of these hermit bees do not live in colonies, but alone. If you want to settle solitary bees, setting up an insect hotel is usually not enough. You can find out how to create a garden in which the bees hum and buzz in the following article.
How can you introduce wild bees in the garden?
To settle wild bees in the garden, create a variety of habitats, such as sandhills, natural stone walls, rock gardens or piles of dead wood. Leave pithy stems and plant fragrant forage plants (native wildflowers). Also offer the bees water with exit aids.
Habitats for wild bees
Many insect hotels remain empty because wild bees need housing tailored precisely to their needs:
- Sand bees live in loose soil.
- Mason bees use small cavities as a nesting place.
- Leaf cutter bees collect pieces of plants and build a nest out of them.
- Snail shell mason bees look for empty snail shells and lay their eggs in them.
Creating places of retreat
It's not difficult to create a biotope for solitary bees, even in a small garden. This makes the garden design even more diverse and varied:
- Design part of the bed for drought-loving herbs in the shape of a sand hill. This offers earth bees an ideal habitat, and at the same time the fragrant plants serve as a source of food.
- Stabilize one side of the hill with a natural stone wall, in the cracks of which the hermit bees can find shelter.
- Classic rock gardens are also a paradise for wild bees. When planted sparsely, wild bees like to use them as a habitat. The plants mostly cultivated here are very bee-friendly thanks to their open flowers.
- Place a pile of dead wood in a sunny spot. Many bees prefer rotten wood as a place for their nests. They use the feeding passages of other insects or gnaw their own passage.
- Some solitary bees lay their eggs in stems containing pith, for example of elderberry, blackberry or mullein. Leave them in autumn and only cut plants back in spring.
Fragrant forage plants
If you want to attract wild bees to your garden, you should at least partially say goodbye to a well-kept golf lawn. Instead, transform a corner of the area into a fragrant wildflower meadow:
- Match the wildflower mix to the planned location.
- When sowing the food plants, make sure that the mixture used (€26.00 on Amazon) does not contain any exotic plants that bloom beautifully but are worthless to the hermit bees. You can recognize this by labels such as: “Native seed mixture” or “Regional seeds”.
- It is also important when choosing that something is always in bloom, because this is the only way the insects can consistently find food.
- The blooming greenery is only mowed once or twice a year. This ensures that the plants self-seed and sprout again next year.
Tip
The basis of all life is water. As summers become drier, insects often no longer find enough fluids. Therefore, offer your buzzing lodgers water in a trough with an exit aid. It looks very nice if you place a moss cushion in the bowl on which the animals can land and rest.
