Three ways to make your garden bee-friendly this autumn

As you'll know if you've read our page explaining how we're building a brighter future, we're all about looking after bees as they're so important to our environment as well as lots of other things. They pollinate nearly three quarters of the plants that produce 90% of the world's food*. That's pretty big.  This is all the more reason to look after them the best we can.  Honeybees have a whale of a time during the summer but in the autumn months they spend a lot of their time inside their hive, trying to keep warm and foraging for food for the rest of the winter. Want to know more about what bees get up to in autumn? We've written a little fact-filled blog post all about it. Here's three ways to make sure your garden is as bee-friendly as it can be this autumn so that we can all continue to look after the little yellow guys that do so much for us. 

1. Build a log pile

Building a log pile can be a great way to provide shelter for foraging bumblebees if the weather takes a turn for the worse. They'll use it as a place to nest and wait for rain to pass. You can fill gaps between the logs with a little bit of leaves and moss to create even more warmth for them.

2. Leave some nesting places

When mowing your lawn towards the winter, if you leave a patch to grow slightly longer then it's a great place for bumblebees to nest in to keep warm. 

3. Late flowering plants

Late flowering plants and flowers such as Himalayan balsalm, snowdrops and ivy can help bees collect their food for the winter and planting spring-flowering bulbs in autumn can help you make sure you've got a good supply of pollen for the queen bees who will be coming out of hibernation the following spring. Spring blooms like crocus, alliums and grape hyacinth are all good options for this.

There's three things to add to your gardening to-do list this autumn to create a safe and helpful place for bees. Our teams have planted wildflower bee-bombs in their gardens this summer ready to provide the last little bit of food for our local bees before the winter. What else can you do? Show us your bee-friendly gardens on Twitter or Instagram by tagging us.  

Watch a little more all about the beehives that we sponsor down in the Neath valley, South Wales on our YouTube channel. 


*World Bee Day