Pollinators Awareness Week

 
The wildflower verges along the John Muir walkway near Musselburgh are still absolutely beautiful and today rosebay willowherb is starting to bloom, adding its bright pink to the wonderful variety of colours on display (in these photos the red flowers are poppies and the yellow are tall melilot and there are some pale purple thistles in the background of the photo below)

The verges are also buzzing with the sound of bees, mostly white tailed / buff tailed bumble bees (I can't tell the difference between these two, I have to admit) but also some red tailed bumble bees, early bumblebees, common carder bees and honey bees.

It's wonderful to see so many bees, and in a place like this it's easy to forget that bees and other pollinator species are struggling to thrive, in many instances struglling to even survive.

Pollinators Awareness Week aims to raise awareness of the plight of our pollinators and to encourage people, private individuals and those responsible for public gardens and verges, to manage their land with an eye to the pollinators.

The top tips are:

a) Grow more flowers, shrubs and trees
b) Leave patches of ground to go wild
c) Cut grass less often
d) Avoid where possible disturbing insect nests or hibernation spots
e) Avoid pesticides and use natural methods of pest control

But also, I think it's so important to just get out there and spend some time with the bees and the flowers that they look after and appreciate how wonderful they are.

I'd also recommend reading The Bees, an amazing novel by Laline Paull, I'm reading it just now and will review it hopefully before the end of Pollinators Awareness Week.

As ever, red text contains hyperlinks that take you to other webpages where you can find out more.