more on Bees~

I do hope they achieve this, Dungerness is very open! also surely the gardens in the area to also need grow these flowers so that the seeds have a chance to spread further afield. Lets hope it excites the public imagination as then it tends to catch on. Does red clover grow easily?

I think Clover spreads well and is the devil to get rid of so hopefully this may work!

Great blog Arlene as where would any garden be without them ..sad that they need to be re introduced but lucky to have colonies elsewhere in the world to draw upon .

This not likely to be the case for some insects and animals we lose but get a general feeling that people are becoming more concerned and devoting areas of their garden to all wildlife.

~I am planning to buy some wildflower seed inc clover and may try to grow a raised bed next year~if we all grew some it would help!

Perhaps clover lawns will become fashionable.

~wouldn't be so hard to keep up! apparently a light trim encourages growth!

I try with my messy garden believe me ..sadly the things we regard as weeds the insects and wildlife seem to love have lots of purple flowered hedge woundwort which not pretty but the bees just love it .

Loads of ivy over walls and through trees birds butterflies and insects get so much from it from cover to flowers to eating the black seed pods ..

This is great news where I use to live there were loads of the red clover all over my garden when I moved I missed it. Thanks Arlene

~you are an example to follow BB and Jane~ have you heard from David?

I have lots of clover in my lawns (more clover than grass I think). Dungeness is not far from me so maybe some of these little bees will visit me. Sounds a very interesting project. Hope it is successful.

I hope its a great success Arlene......otherwise it wont be long before we are in serious trouble ........We need them desperately.......

We can only hope that suitable precautions are taken for their introduction!
I would like to point out that the article is not 100% accurate the black british honeybee died out a hundred years or so ago, with the introduction of higher yeilding NZ and Aussie bees giving them intensive competition, these introduced bees did very well here but were dieing off in the winters so a monk (forget his name now) introduced the african black bee to cross breeed with them to produce a hardier strain, this was in the huge apiaries of Buckfast Abbey, these bees had a mite come along with them that has subsequently decimated our bee stocks , the mites name is VARROA. you will not see a native honey bee they do not exist anymore as bees cross breed very easily at best there may be a mongrel strain or two left far to the north and well away from the new bees flight zones.
I wish them luck but I hope for all our native bumbles left that the introductions planned are CLEAN !!

~|surely they will check before bringing them in? you would think so!

They didnt the last time and we paid a horrendous price for it, I kept bees then and lost the lot in one fell swoop, negating hundreds of £s worth of investment in equipment etc I do not agree with this transplantation of species ,mankind is messing with the natural order again, If it hadnt been for intensive agri practices and the indescriminate use of pesticides and herbicides we would not have lost the bees in the first place, for the remedy then to be placed in the hands of "wellmeaning" volunteers who self police themselves is foolhardy in the extreme!
I dont want to be a damp blanket on this ,for I love bee's and what they can and do do for us, but we can ill afford another disaster!
Better to leave it as is and put serious pressure on the govt to stop GM crops coming in through the "back door" as they are beginning to do, which willl lead to the loss of many many species including inevitably us
GM is a con the makers of the pest/herbicides made for them own the PATENT o the seed thats grown and profit all round from the decimation to our wildlife that will see us stripped of diversity in a generation. Ask some of the canadians on here what happened to their wildlife as it was introduced there...literally Armageddon!
Tell the govts to stop messing it all up NOW!

Interesting blog! I had no idea that several bee species native to the UK had become extinct.

This year I have seen more bees than ever coming to the flowers on my balcony! I've seen honey bees & bumblebees. I taught my 2 year old granddaughter to say "Bumblebee" this summer! Now when she wants to go out into the "garden", as she calls our balcony, she always tells me when she sees a bee.

It seems that the 5 baskets of Fuchsias, as well as the two standards, are what brought so many to the balcony this year.