Where our old glasshouse once stood, a new kind of dwelling is taking shape. Led by Kiran, our ecologist, and gardener, Tej; the team gathered recently to get our hands messy and build bee hotels from materials we found on the site itself.
Our guests of honour? The hairy-footed flower bee, one of the first bees to wake each spring and a familiar visitor to our garden.
From breezeblock to bee hotel
We're experimenting with reusing the substrate of the old glasshouse site to create new habitat. The idea came from what was already there: the breezeblocks left behind, with their neat rows of hollow chambers, looked remarkably like tiny hotels.
Hairy-footed flower bees usually nest in vertical earth banks, soft clay cliffs and the crumbling mortar of old walls. To recreate those conditions, we packed the breezeblocks with the site's own dug-up clay, mixed with sand, straw and water. Once dry, the mix should be firm enough to hold its shape yet soft enough for a female bee to excavate her nest tunnels.
Meet the hairy-footed flower bee
The hairy-footed flower bee (Anthophora plumipes) is one of the true heralds of spring. The males often appear from late February, with females following a couple of weeks later, and they fly until around June. It's the largest of the UK's five flower bee species and is especially at home in the gardens, parks and old walls of southern England.
At first glance you might mistake one for a small bumblebee, but look closer. The females are black and velvety, with rusty orange pollen brushes on their back legs. The males are gingery brown with a pale, creamy face and long, feathery fringes of hair on their middle legs, which give the species its name. Plumipes loosely translates as "feather-footed".
They're also easy to spot by the way they move: a quick, darting flight, often pausing to hover in front of a flower before diving in with their long tongue already extended. That tongue makes them important pollinators of early, tubular flowers such as lungwort, primrose, comfrey and red dead-nettle.
Like most of the UK's 270 or so bee species, they're solitary. There's no queen or hive; each female digs and provisions her own nest. Where conditions suit them, though, many females will nest side by side, forming lively little neighbourhoods.
Welcoming solitary bees into your own garden
You don't need a large plot to make a difference. A few small changes can turn a garden, balcony or front step into a haven.
Plant for early spring. Many solitary bees emerge when little else is in flower. Lungwort, primroses, comfrey, red dead-nettle, rosemary, flowering currant and pussy willow all offer vital early food.
Keep something flowering all year. Aim for a succession of blooms from February to October, and favour simple, single flowers over showy doubles, whose nectar and pollen can be hard to reach.
Leave some ground bare. Around 70% of the UK's solitary bees nest underground. A sunny patch of undisturbed, bare soil, or a south-facing bank, can become a nesting site.
Go easy on the tidying. Hollow stems, old walls with soft mortar and a little untidiness all provide shelter. Before repointing an old wall, check whether bees are using it.
Build a clay block. Inspired by ours? Pack a sturdy container, such as an old breezeblock or plant pot, with a damp mix of clay, sand and a little straw. Once dry, set it in a sunny, sheltered spot facing south or south-east.
Make or buy a bee hotel for tube-nesters. Bundles of hollow bamboo or drilled hardwood blocks suit mason and leafcutter bees. Mount it at least a metre off the ground in full sun, and replace the tubes every couple of years to keep it clean.
Skip the pesticides. Solitary bees are sensitive to chemicals, so let natural predators such as birds, ladybirds and hoverflies do the work.
Offer a drink. A shallow dish of water with pebbles to land on helps thirsty bees on warm days. Some species, like mason bees, also need a patch of mud to build their nests.
Watching and waiting
We know hairy-footed flower bees already forage here: we've recorded them in the garden before, and you can see that sighting on iNaturalist. Now we wait to see whether they choose to move in.
Through the winter the hotels will sit quietly. Come spring, we'll be watching for the tell-tale signs of nesting: small, neat holes in the clay, and females flying in with legs dusted orange with pollen. We'll share what we find here and on Instagram, so follow along.
