Butterfly and bee garden

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Butterfly and bee garden at the Orangerie.

Is it a bumblebee, a wasp or a bee?

Bumblebees have a strongly hairy body and there is no clear transition between chest and abdomen. In wasps, the yellow-black color dominates. Between chest and abdomen is a very thin waist. Bees are brown hairy, and their waist is less pronounced than in wasps.

Social or solitary life?

Social bees live in groups and cannot survive on their own. Like the honeybee and many bumblebee and wasp species, they live in colonies. Within the group there is a clearly defined division of tasks with workers, drones and one queen.

Solitary bees live separately and like to stay in bee hotels. The females prepare a brood nest all by themselves. Occasionally there is social contact during mating with the male bee. There is no more work for the males.

What do bees do for us?

In their search for pollen and nectar, bees pollinate flowers. This subsequently produces a lot of seeds and fruits, a large part of which also serves for human consumption.

Without bumblebees and bees, the production of zucchini and pumpkin decreases by 90%. There is a loss of 40% to 90% in the yield of apple, pear, cherry, plum, blackberry, raspberry, blueberry, rapeseed.

Worldwide, 87 out of 124 major crops for human food are pollinated by insects, mainly honeybees and bumblebees.

Solitary insects provide only 2% food of human use. Are they therefore less important than the socially living bees and bumblebees? Certainly not! Just a summary of their important input:

They pollinate wild plants in roadsides, parks, squares, forests and nature reserves.
As a result, they provide seeds and berries for wildlife.
By preserving the wild flora, they fight against erosion.
The conservation of these wild plants, in turn, provides carbon storage and water purification in wetlands.
And it is much more pleasant to walk and cycle along the roadsides that bloom every year!

How does climate change affect it?

Wild bees are like the canary birds used to be in the coal mines: a bio-indicator that alarms if things go wrong somewhere.

Climate change is also weighing on the population of solitary bees:

Because plants start flowering earlier but wild bees do not develop at the same rate, species can miss out on their nutrition and there is no reproduction of the species anymore. Moreover, the pollination of the plant also goes wrong.
New pathogens develop new diseases. The problems currently facing the social honeybee are well known.
New predators are going to threaten native bee species. For example, there is the Asian hornet that again threatens the honey bee as an example.
Some species of wild bees fly selectively on one particular plant species. If that one plant disappears from the region due to changing climate conditions, the bee species also disappears.

Do you also want bees and butterflies in your garden? Some tips:

Place a bee hotel in your garden. Use bamboo sticks in different thicknesses or wooden logs in which you drill holes with a diameter ranging between 4 and 10 mm. Point the openings to the south side in full sun and keep it dry.
Cut the grass less in the garden and do this in phases: let some of the grass grow higher. Wild bees find their food there.
Let a corner of the garden go wild. Smaller animal species such as bees and butterflies find peace, food and nesting opportunities.
Plant herbs and shrubs with flowers that provide pollen and nectar to the bees. Choose plants that bloom at different times so that the bees and butterflies have a food source throughout the season. The park at the bee hotel is a good example here with a rich offer, spread over the entire flowering season: catnip, stork's beak, forest sage, etc.

Early bulbous plants such as crocuses can also offer pollen in early spring!