our bumblebee garden!!

Hi everyone, this is F & K again

This is the list we made a couple of weeks ago on ways to help bumblebees. The ones with the stars are the ones we had done.

1. Join the Bumblebee Conservation Trust*

2. Check out how Bee kind our garden is from the BBCT website* 

3. Find out what plants bumblebees like*

4. Plant those plants in our garden

5. Learn how to identify different bumblebees

6. Do a bumblebee survey

7. Don't use any pesticides in the garden or any other chemicals that can harm wild creatures*

8. Try to persuade other people to join BBCT, including our friends at school

9. Only buy organic fruit and vegetables and other food - because that way no pesticides have been used that can kill wild bumblebees*

10. Encourage farmers where we live to leave places for wild flowers to grow.

Since then we have done loads more work! We did some research and took the Bumblebee Gardening book to the garden centre. They had quite a few things ready to plant. So we bought...

Foxgloves, blackcurrant, flowering currant, catmint, lupins, heather, cowslip, primroses...

Then we dug up quite a big bit of the grass and made a bumblebee garden. 

Dad put logs along the edge to stop the weeds jumping over. We wanted to buy lungwort and borage too, but they weren't ready yet. We already have some pussy willow, and the flowering currant will be good when the Queen bumblebees come out of hibernation. She needs to have a good meal on nectar to get her strength back. Then she makes a nest and stores nectar in little wax pots in her nest and lays the eggs nearby. She has to lie on top of the eggs to keep them warm, just a bit like a bird! If there aren't enough flowers with nectar and pollen the Queen will die, and so will her eggs. So hopefully our flowers will come out in time!

Here are some pictures of our garden so far....

We can put a star next to our plan about planting bumblebee plants in our garden. We will take a photo when the flowers come out, and we will definitely be looking out for bumblebees...

this is the flowering currant

Our granny found out about our bumblebee garden and she sent up some seeds of fried egg plant.We also have the wildflower seeds from the Bumblebee Conservation Trust. AND, my dad signed us up for a special Grow Wild pack from Kew Gardens. The seeds they sent are meant for Scotland and they include autumn hawkbit, cowslip, field scabious, oxeye daisy, red campion, wild carrot, tufted vetch and all sorts of other wild meadow flowers. 

We will have to do some thinking about how we plant all these seeds, because they need places with poor soil and not much grass...our garden has rich soil at the moment.. We will let you know how we get on next time.

Bye, see you next time we post!

F & K x

flower garden 2014

Hi again

This is F & K the bumblebee kids...

Last year we planted a flower garden because we only had a veggie garden. We spent ages researching which plants to get and what kind of soil they needed. Here is a picture of it.

We built a wall around it and added lots of topsoil. We planted marigolds, pansies, erodium, rosemary, lavender, honeysuckle, lamb's ear and other wee plants. We thought it would be good for insects, but we didn't know too much about bumblebees then. 

Here are some photos of marigolds and pansies that grew there last summer. 

We had loads of fun!! Bye F & K

Bumblebee plans

Hi, this is F and K, two bumblebee kids!

We decided to do a special study of bumblebees because we have a book called 'A Sting in the Tale' by a man called Dave Goulson, who started the Bumblebee Conservation Trust. We joined the Bumblebee Conservation Trust and they sent us a load of stuff. They sent Buzzword - a newsletter, Busy Bees - lots of games, car stickers, stickers, badges, postcards, a packet of wildflower seeds, posters and a leaflet to identify the bumblebees we see, and also a whole booklet on how to plant flowers for bumblebees.  Check out http://bumblebeeconservation.org/  . On the website we did the Bee kind challenge - which gives you points for the kinds of flowers you have in your garden. We did OK - we scored 1627 - but we thought we could do better!

This is what we found out about bumblebees....

In the UK there are 24 species of bumblebees but only 8 of them are common. They are struggling because there are far fewer flowers in the countryside to give them the pollen and nectar they need to survive. Bumblebees make small nests and they do not store much honey so if there aren't enough flowers they can die. A lot of the food we eat is pollinated by bumblebees - like raspberries, peas, beans, tomatoes, potatoes and lots of other things. 

We live north of Inverness, so quite far north in Scotland. We live by a big forest with lots of scots pine trees. It gets really light in summer, almost all night, but it is sometimes quite cold. The spring is later up here than in the south of Scotland, and we are quite high up, so we sometimes have frosty nights even in May. We also get quite strong winds, not as strong as on the west coast, but strong enough to knock trees down sometimes. That means that any flowers we plant have to be hardy.

This is the 10 point plan we wrote down to do to help bumblebees... We have put a star next to the ones we have done so far. We will keep you posted on how many we manage to do.

1. Join the Bumblebee Conservation Trust*
2. Check out how Bee kind our garden is from the BBCT website* 
3. Find out what plants bumblebees like*
4. Plant those plants in our garden
5. Learn how to identify different bumblebees
6. Do a bumblebee survey
7. Don't use any pesticides in the garden or any other chemicals that can harm wild creatures*
8. Try to persuade other people to join BBCT, including our friends at school
9. Only buy organic fruit and vegetables and other food - because that way no pesticides have been used that can kill wild bumblebees*
10. Encourage farmers where we live to leave places for wild flowers to grow.

Make your bumblebees happy:)

F & K