UK Gardeners Asked To Make ‘Bee Baths’

If you want to help bees this spring, you can start by leaving your dandelions well alone. They’re especially helpful for rare Pantaloon bees.

And, if you see a bee in distress, some sugar water can indeed help revive them – though too much sugar, a larger container of the water than is necessary, and an ever-present supply of sugar water outside of emergencies can all harm bees.

But it can be easy to forget that our flying friends sometimes need an unsweetened drink, too.

That’s why the Royal Parks, among others, have urged us to create “bee baths”.

It’s a shallow container of water filled with pebbles (since the Royal Park used a ceramic tray for their bee bath, I figured my ceramic baking beans were an OK alternative), so that the water is never especially deep.

“Imagine if you were the size of a bee,” a video from the Royal Parks explained.

“It’s difficult to take a drink of water when sources of water tend to be quite deep. Even [a] bird bath… can be quite deep for a bee.”

Not only do bees consume water to survive, like us, but they also need water to cool the hive on hot days, provide food for larvae, and even dilute honey.

As the Royal Parks said, a bee bath provides a shallower source of water for the pollinators to draw from.

And, Quince Honey Farms added, bees drink an “amazing amount of water” on hot days.

While it’s true that any shallow source of water, rocks or not, will do, that poses a problem; very shallow water evaporates quickly in the heat, when bees most need water.

The bee bath can help to hydrate them for longer, as the rocks provide cover.

• A shallow tray, dish, or saucer,
• Pebbles,
• Water.

Place the water in the pebble-filled dish halfway up, so the tops of the pebbles are still dry.

These dry parts act as a “landing pad for bees,” the Royal Parks explained, so don’t cover them with water.

Place your “bee bath” on a flat surface with some shade. Putting it near flowers, where the bees will be busy collecting pollen, is especially useful; like having a vending machine in your office.

Check up on your bee bath now and then to make sure the water hasn’t fully evaporated, and refill it as needed.

And if you don’t want to do that, the WWF said you can put “pebbles or stones on the edge of a pond, or in a bird bath”.