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Save The Bees with Simple Home DIY This Summer

Save The Bees with Simple Home DIY This Summer
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Save The Bees with Simple Home DIY This Summer
Bees need our help! Bees are a massive part of our eco system, they not only pollinate the food we need to survive, but they also pollinate many of the trees and flowers that provide habitat for wildlife as well as the filtered air we certainly can't live without.
 

If you’re looking for something fun and educational to do with the kids this summer holidays, building a bee B&B or planting some pollination encouraging flowers is a relatively low-cost and fun activity to do and the teachers will definitely be impressed come September!

So, lets get into it… you have a lot of bee puns coming your way.


1. Build a Bee B&B! 

Home is where the hive is! Much like us humans’ bees need a safe and secure shelter to shout ‘Honey! I’m home!’ into every night and with changes in our land use, including insensitive urban development and intensive farming continuing to rise, it’s important that we give bees a helping hand in finding their forever home.
 

There are a few ways in which you can create a bee friendly habitat, pick whichever one best suits your outdoor space!

  • Get crafty and create a beeautiful little beehive

You will need:

  • Some bamboo canes
  • A plastic bottle, a 2L size is ideal
  • A craft knife
  • Sand paper and sanding block
  • Twine
  • Hack Saw
  • Vice
  • Safety Goggles
  • Safety Gloves

Method:

  1. Using the craft knife cut the two ends of the plastic bottle off, leaving you with a plastic cylinder.
  2. Cut your bamboo canes using the handsaw, they need to be roughly 3cm shorter than the cylinder. Be sure to cut up a mixture of thin and wide canes so the bees can choose a hole size to settle in.
  3. Smooth the ends of the canes using the sandpaper.
  4. Fill the plastic bottle with the bamboo canes, make sure they’re securely wedged in!
  5. Wrap twine around the middle of the cylinder and hang from desired tree or area. Hang your new bee hive at least 1m above ground and in a spot that gets plenty of sun.

Please ensure children have adult supervision at all times when creating your bee hive, sharp tools can be extremely dangerous.

  • Buy Bee Friendly Bricks With Ibstock

If you’re not feeling crafty, you can purchase Beehabitat bricks through our branches. Whilst these bricks are intended to be part of a larger construction, there’s no reason why you couldn’t purchase a few and stack them up in your garden somewhere. The perfect bee-pad without any of the hard work!


2. Shop Bee Friendly Products 

Many home and garden products include ingredients such as honey and beeswax and whilst collecting these ingredients don’t always harm bees, unfortunately some methods of gathering these substances not only harm the bees themselves but their habitats can also be damaged or destroyed in the process.  
 

Opting for vegan products when working on your home or garden can really make a difference in more ways than one. Brands such as Osmo use all natural ingredients in their Polyx-Oil’s, this means less environmental harm without skimping on the quality of their products!


3. Plant Some Colourful Flowers With Topsoil/All-Purpose Compost

Grab your trowel and some Lavender, Blue Borage, Crocus or even some Bee-gonia seeds and get planting. Not only are flowers great for our pollinating pals but they also add some colour and a fresh new look to your garden  
 

If you want to give your new flower friends the best start to life, be sure to plant them into a rich soil filled with all the right nutrients.

Happy soil = happy flowers = happy bees!   

Shop our range of topsoils and all-purpose-compost online or in branch.


Now you’re ready to go away and create you’re very own bee haven! Before you didn’t hive a clue but now you do! Bee sure to tag us in any of your bee-based pictures across our social channels we’d love to see them…

We’ll buzz of with the bee puns now!

 

The above article was published on 15th July 2022, and is subject to change and further guidance.



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