gardening for bees and nature

I was hoping to take possession of a couple of occupied hives this last weekend, to put into our apple orchard, but the weather was too cold and the owner didn't bring them over. I have, just yesterday, got in the post some scabious seeds, which should do well on our clay/chalky soil. Our lawn, which is a very poor example to gardeners everywhere, is largely made up of white clover, and in summer, it is an assault course trying to walk across it without squashing bees or getting stung. We have cats, too (quite a few more than you) and you sound a bit of a softie, like us, trying to care for chilly insects! Good for you, and welcome to GoY!

Thank you. Yes I am a softie and I have recently gone mad trying to help the bees. I was reading last night about the use of Neonicotinoinds and bees and got a bit stressed out as apparently all garden centre plants use it and it stays in the plants for upto 6 years, I cant really afford to uproot my plants and buy organic plants so I hope I am not doing more harm than good to the bees. You are lucky to have a lawn full of clovers! I have to stop my cat Pumpkin from batting bumbles when they buzz around the garden- he is obsessed for some reason!

All cats are daft, and we seem to have some of the daftest - they think bees (and we have some splendid, huge iridescent navy blue ones that make a lot of noise) have been put on earth for their express entertainment. It terrifies me that one of them will get stung inside his or her mouth. What are even worse are the wasps. There are some truly vicious ones here - tiny, but the locals say they could "kill a horse". I've been on the receiving end of one, and it took a whole raftful of antihistamines and painkillers to stop me squealing and swelling.
I had no idea about the neonicotinoids, BBF. I haven't heard of them being used in the UK but that doesn't mean they aren't. The good news, as far as I'm concerned, is that Italy banned them in 2010 for seed treatment, and bee colonies have since recovered very noticeably. Hurrah for us! What I can't understand is, given that it is so obvious that colony collapse is tied into their use, neonicotinioids haven't been banned altogether worldwide. Too useful in the making of a fast buck, I expect.
What are we doing to our world?

You've got some nice plants there in your list, especially the herbs.
Nice that you care for the wildlife aswell. Gardens and creatures (including cats) go very well together :o)

Why thank you! Yes the Herbs are fairly cheap to buy but flower well and as the bees love them I shall plant lots more this year. The cats munch on the catnip though or plonk themselves on top of it! I just have to constantly watch they are not trying to play with bees too as I dont want the cats to get stung. How many cats do you have and I like the idea of having cacti plants, how many have you got in your garden and are they easy to grow in our British weather?

Hywel is our resident cactus expert/fanatic with so many of them, he's probably lost count, and he's VERY knowledgeable! I'm telling you this because he'd be far too modest to say so himself.

I wouldn't call myself an expert lol as Gattina sais I am modest (or truithful) but I am addicted to cacti. I've been growing them since I was a teenager many years ago.
I keep them in cold frames during the summer, and in the conservatory in winter. I don't know how many I've got. I've lost count.
There's only one cat here. She gets up to enough mischeif lol :o)

I might try to have a few cacti in the tiny front section away from the cats! Hywel's garden is amazing and so big!
I am glad to hear about Italy's bee population Gattina and have you any pictures of the blue iridescent bees? I dislike wasps too!

I've just got a new camera that's supposed to take fantastic close-up pictures, but I haven't allowed myself start to use it yet, because if I do, then all the important stuff I really should be doing in the house and garden will get neglected, but watch this space. I don't rate my chances of getting really close to one of the bees, but you never know.
If you don't like wasps you'd have been freaked out by the ones we started to find in the upstairs rooms last summer - they were about 2" long and built like shire horses. Luckily, they seemed to come out at nightfall, and were dozy enough for us to zap round about bedtime before anyone got attacked. When I was bringing the Christmas decorations down from the attic a few months ago, I discovered the old nest in the ribbon box (not sure how they got up there in the first place) The locals told us that they were quite aggressive normally and could kill cats and quite big dogs, so we were fortunate. I don't like killing things normally, but we were scared enough to break all the rules.