Bumble bees need gardeners

It's not just humans flooded out in all this rain - bumble bees are suffering too as they can't fly in heavy rain and their nests (on the ground) are being flooded too. And because of changes in farming practice over the past 50 years, there aren't as many flowers around, so numbers are falling.

So it's good news that gardeners can help with flowers that bumblebees love, often but not exclusively purple-blue ones, and including foxglove, aquilegia, lupins, chives, sage, thyme (in our garden, they love the comfrey that we grow for groundcover). Gardeners can also help out with artificial nestboxes, but need to patient, according to Prof Dave Goulson at Stirling University (home of the Bumblebee Conservation Trust) who's researching the ideal artificial bumblebee nest so gardeners can help survival. He was interviewed on Radio 4's Shared Earth yesterday and explained that bumblebees usually nest in old mouse nests. So although the artificial nests sold at garden centres don't seem to work, if you wait long enough for mice to use them, and then, just as importantly, abandon them, bumblebee queens sniff these sites out and move in. It's all because they can't carry nesting material easily, so have to find a ready-lined place.

You can listen to the programme via the web - just fast forward to around 18 minutes in for the bumblebee bit. The Prof asked listeners to e-mail him with info on successful and unsuccessful bumblebee nests in your garden, but I couldn't find details on the BBC site. However the Bumblebee Conservation Trust website has info on the nest site trial and an e-mail address for your input. The site also has useful lists of flowering plants to grow for bumblebees, plus plenty of other bumblebee bumf. We’ll be adding details of the trust to our list of conservation sites on our Gardening Masterclass site soon too.