This category explains the insects you meet in the garden and around the house: wasps, horseflies, honey bees, bumblebees and whatever turns up next. The guides cover how to tell them apart, why some of them sting or bite, and when a nest or a swarm needs a photo sent rather than a guess. Start with the article that matches what you are looking at.
Give me a bare strip and eight weeks and I would sow this before most catalogue perennials. The bees find it. They stay on it. On a warm morning the blue-purple coils look dusted with movement. That is phacelia for bees in a British garden: a fast annual, a green manure you actually let flower,
On a midsummer afternoon the landing board changes. The bees come in paler, and the smell off the combs is lighter. Walk the ride behind the apiary and you see why. Tall pink spikes, four petals, a stand that looks like it was poured down the edge of the wood. That is rosebay willowherb for
Rosebay willowherb for bees Read More »
You do not attract bees with a wooden ornament and a hopeful label. You attract them with food they can find, reach and return to. I watch this from the hive entrance. On a good day the foragers leave in a line and come back heavy. They are not touring the neighbourhood for scenery. They
How to attract bees to your garden Read More »
You do not see a grey paper ball. You see wasps leaving the brick. They use the same small hole, over and over: a gap in the mortar, the holes in an air brick, the crack where a pipe enters the wall. From the garden it looks as if the house itself is the nest.
Why Are Wasps Coming Out of the Wall? Read More »
That grey paper ball in the soffit looks permanent. By late September the traffic has dropped, the evenings are colder, and the advice is always the same: leave it, wasps don’t come back to an old nest. The first half of that sentence is true. The second half is where the confusion starts. Do wasp
Do Wasp Nests Come Back Next Year? Read More »
If a wasp has just gone into a pint in West Bridgford, or a yellow-and-black stream is vanishing into the soffit, you are not imagining the change. Late summer is when wasps sting more often, and when they turn up on drinks, bins, fallen fruit and, if you keep bees, at the hive entrance. It
Why Wasps Sting More in Late Summer—When a Nest Needs Removing Read More »