How Can I Help Wild Bees?

Quinta Vale da Lama, in partnership with Mud Valley Institute, offers a 6-month residential farm internship to support and create the next generation of organic and regenerative farmers, giving participants the critical learning and work experience as they begin their journey in food grow and farm operations with a focus on project design and management.

Sarah wrote a detailed article which we have turned into three blog posts to be shared with you. This is the third and final blog in the series.

You can read her first blog post here and her second blog post here.

If there is one key principle to respect in any environmental action, it is observation. Observing before acting allows us to understand the environment we’re dealing with and to act in a more thoughtful way that is better suited to local conditions.

But what does this have to do with wild bees? Watching a bee foraging isn’t going to help protect it from pesticides, is it? Yes, but it can help protect and even restore its habitat.

It’s simple: get out of your house and take the time to observe your surroundings, especially in the early hours of the morning.
– Are there any small sunny areas bare, well-drained soil around you?
– Do you have any dead wood exposed to the sun and any old tree stumps with cavities?
– Are there any wet, muddy areas such as puddles and pools?
– Do you have untouched fields or flower meadows?

All these types of ecosystems provide nesting sites and/or nesting material. In short, ask yourself: what and where are the potential refuges for wild bees? This is an excellent place to start protecting them.

A four-striped differ bee (Amegilla quadrifasciata).

After observation comes action: you can not only protect but also restore habitats for wild bees. As mentioned above, nothing too complicated:
– If you have a garden, leave a few areas of sandy, bare soil and add piles of stones exposed to the sun where bees can nest in cracks and gaps.
– If you have a woodland, consider leaving some dead wood in the forest; nothing is more attractive to carpenter bees, which prefer to lay their eggs in old branches and tree stumps.
– If you have an orchard, why not plant perennial flower beds rich in native melliferous species between the rows? This will not only encourage the arrival of pollinating wild bees, but will also help to control pests in the orchard.
– You can also add containers to provide a water source for the bees, especially during the summer months.

A second important point is to link the habitat with the food source, the so-called ‘melliferous plants’ (i.e. plants that provide pollen and nectar for bees). Wild bees have a range of several hundred metres. That’s why nesting and foraging areas need to be close together.

One way of doing this is to create several small pollinator gardens next to the habitats (no more than 300m apart), which will greatly reduce the distance between the nest and the food plants and allow the female to raise more eggs.

There are three main points to consider when choosing plants:
1) Stay as local as possible: it is certainly important to focus on melliferous plants, but especially those native to the region, as these are often best adapted to the needs of local bees.
2) Always plant a variety of plant species: as we have seen, many wild bee species only collect pollen from a single plant family, making them highly dependent on the presence of that plant. So the only way to ensure a diversity of bees and other pollinating insects is to increase the diversity of local flora. This helps to diversify food sources and habitats, because the more diverse the range of species in a landscape, the more suitable nesting sites there are (i.e. type and time of flowering, perennial or annual, hollow stems, etc.). As a result, wild bee populations find a variety of conditions in which to survive and thrive.
3) Sowing wild flowers rich in pollen and nectar.

Here are some examples of plants adapted to the Algarve’s climate – and even endemic to the region.

Knowing which plant species provide nectar for wild bees is important, but understanding how to cultivate them as both a food source and a habitat can significantly enhance their role in supporting wild bee populations.

For example, why not replace your garden fence with a biodiversity hedge or surround your house with a flower bed? If you have an orchard, you can also sow flower patches between the trees or along fields and paths.[SM2]

If you have limited space, you can still help wild bees by providing them with a complete nesting area – also known as an ‘insect hotel‘. As the name suggests, this structure improves the supply of nesting sites for wild bees, particularly species that nest in dead wood or hollow stems.

Nothing too complicated: all you need is a few planks of wood assembled into the shape of a tall house and protected by a sloping roof so that rain can run off. There are, however, some important conditions to bear in mind:
– Pay attention to where the wood comes from (it should not be treated).
– Place your insect hotel in a sunny, south/south-east facing location.
– Make sure the hotel is surrounded by melliferous plants.
– The hotel should be as sheltered as possible from bad weather, especially wind.
– The holes drilled or made in the stems should be 3 to 10 mm wide and 5 to 10 cm deep, with at least 2 cm between holes. Don’t hesitate to check that there are no cracks in the sides of the stems to avoid parasites.

A bee hotel

Once you’ve planted melliferous species, built your insect hotel or redesigned your garden, there’s one important step left to take: a walk and observe again. See if the wild bees (re)appear and celebrate every little success. For there’s nothing more satisfying than spotting the entrance to a tunnel between two dead leaves on that sandy bank you’ve left alone for a few weeks. Or hearing the buzz of a carpenter bee not far from a wooden stump you’ve drilled holes in.

If you’re having some troubles identifying specific species, some applications like iNaturalist might be useful to you. This app allows users to share photos of insects (and other local biodiversity observations) and identify them with the help of a community of experts. At the same time, it helps monitor the diversity and evolution of pollinator populations, supporting research and conservation initiatives.

PS: How can I help wild… and domestic bees? Let’s remember that the key to a balanced ecosystem is diversity. Wild bees coexist with other species including the domestic bee. So here’s a simple yet effective solution to help preserve domestic bees, sustainable beekeeping and local genetic heritage: stop buying supermarket honey that’s not exclusively European in origin. Instead, turn to local honey, often sold at local farmers markets. It’s a great way to get to know and support your local beekeepers. Additionally, eating local honey benefits you; since it is produced by local bees collecting from local flowers, local honey can help eliminate seasonal allergies.

To conclude, let’s not forget that the world of wild bees is much bigger than the few pages of this article. Wild bees play a crucial role in pollination, we still have an incomplete understanding of their diversity, ecology and the threats they face. For instance, a 2014 study highlighted the lack of sufficient data to determine the status of more than half of Europe’s bee species (Nieto et al, 2014).

This means that we are still looking at a little-known world, buzzing with life in the fields and towns around us. And yet bees are silently disappearing: the familiar buzz of hundreds of insects in a field is fading, replaced by the roar of the tractor. Wild bees find their habitats gradually destroyed and their food sources poisoned by pesticides or reduced due to competition with domestic bees.

But scientific findings are clear: wild bees are an essential part of the ecosystem for ensuring the reproduction of our crops and orchards, especially in the context of southern Portugal, which is experiencing increasing desertification.

So what can I do? What can you do? What can we do at our own level?

It’s all about taking the first step: a tree stump, a small patch of sand, a few piles of stones, some melliferous plants around it… In other words, creating the basic conditions for the (re)development of wild bees by restoring the heterogeneity of ecosystems to ensure different types of habitats.

Furthermore, the relationship between crops and pollinators is certainly complex, but the solution to preserving their symbiosis is simple: maintain a diversity of pollinators to ensure pollination of a wide range of plant and tree species. Rather than competing with the increasing numbers of domestic bees, it’s about (re)integrating wild bees into the ecosystem.

So the next time you hear a ‘buzz‘, take a moment. Have a look. What if it’s one of them, a wild bee at work in your ecosystem?

To help wild bees, it is important to:
– observe the existing ecosystem;
– take action to improve the ecosystem with habitats, native food and water sources to support wild bees;
– maintain and monitor the improved ecosystem to ensure will bees (re)appear.

To learn more about Sarah and her work, check out her LinkedIn profile.