Strips Of Flowers Attract Bees.

Planting bee-friendly flowers in strips could attract more bees.

12:30 24 March 2015

In the past farming, along with other issues, such as the use of pesticides and urban development, has been connected with the decline in number of bees but now farmland with flowers planted in strips could attract more.

 

The University of Sussex carried out a study which found that flowers planted in strips, attract bees and also encourage nesting.

 

Thomas Wood from the University of Sussex, said that targeted planting could support rarer species, for example planting the flowers near existing colonies.

 

Higher Level Stewardship (HLS) farms are rewarded for planting strips of flowers to attract the bees at the sides of their fields.

 

Studies compared the number of bees on HLS fields, who had planted bee attracting flowers, such as red clover and knapweed, with farms that had not implemented the bee attracting measures.  The HLS farms in Hampshire and West Sussex were observed over two years.

 

The findings were that there were more common bumblebee species and evidence of nesting on the HLS farm than the other.  They also found that for rarer types of bee, there was approximately the same population on both types of farm. 

 

A possibility for this is that some of the rarer types of bee do not fly or forage over longer distances.  Possibly the bee-friendly flowers were situated too far apart to attract these bees.

 

With regards to UK crop production, insect pollination has been valued at approximately £690 million annually.

 

1/10 of Europe's native wild bee species face extinction.