Wild solitary bees offer a vital pollination service – but their nutritional needs aren’t understood

As I stroll across the grocery store, I choose up greens for tomorrow’s dinner, eggs and bread for tonight and a few candy treats for the week. By selecting a variety of various meals varieties, I’ll eat all kinds of vitamins. However what if bread was the one choice obtainable? And one other store simply offered a special kind of loaf? Or solely oranges?

This may increasingly sound far-fetched, however for bees – bugs that rely upon pollen and nectar for his or her diet – that’s the equal of feeding from a big discipline of only one kind of plant. Some bees feed on a variety of vegetation. Others, together with a few of the UK’s 200 wild solitary bee species are specialists, just like the sainfoin bee that solely visits one kind of flower for pollen.

Whereas some UK bee species are thriving, many have declined on account of adjustments within the abundance and number of flowers throughout our landscapes.

A lot much less is understood in regards to the biology of solitary bees in comparison with that of domesticated honeybees or bumblebees, which have been extensively studied in massive numbers beneath lab circumstances. By comparability, solitary bees don’t type colonies or have a queen-worker system. The dietary wants of every solitary bee species varies so it’s troublesome to know what eating regimen they would want with a purpose to thrive throughout experimental circumstances.

But, they supply an important pollination service for a few of our flowering crops and assist keep our wildflower populations. So understanding their diet in higher element may assist us be sure that the appropriate flower meals can be found to them.

The bees’ wants

For my PhD, I’m finding out the totally different fat which might be obtainable in pollen from UK wildflowers and the fat discovered within the our bodies of various bee species. Fat are important to wholesome development and improvement in bees, nonetheless there’s big variation within the amount and high quality of meals that totally different flowers present. Cataloguing that info is sophisticated.

I’m particularly researching why solitary bees, a lot of which have specialised relationships with their meals vegetation, go to sure flowers.

Diet is complicated. Big monocultures, (rising one crop species in a discipline at a time), present a homogenous dietary providing. Areas with a wider range of flowers can present extra dietary range, however extracting sufficient pollen or nectar to analyse is difficult.

Simply because one meals supply has excessive protein ranges, it won’t comprise the important ones or might have a poor fats content material. If I like to recommend that you simply eat nothing however oranges as a result of they’re wealthy in vitamin C, you’d miss out on different key vitamins akin to protein. Equally, with pollen and nectar, we have to perceive the content material of what bees are consuming.

Nectar is a sugary liquid which supplies numerous carbohydrates. Bees drink it utilizing their tongues. Pollen supplies the protein and fats content material bees want and is collected on their our bodies for transport again to their nests. The dietary content material of each pollen and nectar varies broadly between flowers. To know what meals is obtainable to them over massive areas, we have to have dietary info for lots of various vegetation.

Find out how to feed wild bees

Regardless of our lack of know-how in regards to the exact dietary wants of bees, there are methods we might help feed them. Solitary bees might be present in your backyard or native park. To study extra about them, begin by making an attempt to recognise them. Some don’t appear like bees as a result of they are often very small or hairless and a few can simply be mistaken for wasps within the case of Nomada species, with their black and yellow banding and hairless our bodies.

Entomologist and ecologist Steven Falk maintains a superb inventory of photographs on-line and has revealed a complete ID information.

Letting a inexperienced house go wild or selecting seed mixes with numerous flowers can encourage a wide range of wild bees. Even small patches of wildflowers could make a distinction, particularly at instances of 12 months when few different flowers are out, as has been proven in city areas.

Keep away from vegetation bred to have little or no pollen or nectar. Making certain meals is obtainable all through their lively interval is essential. The primary bees emerge in March and the final ones feed till October. So whereas it’s good to have loads of flowers obtainable in peak summer season when numerous bees are lively, bees rising from over-wintering want meals in spring and people stocking up earlier than winter want flowers to forage from.

Helpful assets for choosing vegetation to deliver bees into your backyard embody the RHS vegetation for pollinators checklist, the Bumblebee Conservation Belief’s Bee Type garden-scoring instrument, plus planting suggestions from Mates of the Earth and Buglife.

Our wild solitary bees are an ecologically essential and engaging group of bugs. Steps we take to help them in our gardens and on the panorama scale are key to sustaining the range of bugs that pollinate so a lot of our flowers and crops. Even the smallest patches of wildflowers can present a lot wanted meals for hungry bees and, above all, a diverse menu.