This month Reepham WI was left buzzing with ideas on how to help our “forgotten bees”, given that lesser-known “wild bees” are in critical decline, brought home in a presentation by Hawk Honey, who is associated with Suffolk Wildlife Trust.

Hawk started his talk by telling us how he came to volunteer at Lackford Lakes. While the lakes are a wildlife oasis, his main focus has developed around insects, especially bees and wasps, which come under the collective name of Hymenoptera.

There are more than 250 species of bees in the UK, including honey bees that normally live in managed hives.

Other species, such as bumblebees and solitary bees (i.e., mason, mining, leaf-cutter and others) live in the wild and differ significantly in colour and size, some as small as ants.

There are even cuckoo bees with similar behavioural traits to their feathered friends.

Shockingly, 17 species have already become extinct in East Anglia, 25 are threatened and 31 are of conservation concern. Of course, this affects us all, given that bees are vital to agriculture.

A recent World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) study estimates that one out of every three mouthfuls of food we eat exists because of pollinators – crops such as apples, peas, courgettes, pumpkins, tomatoes, strawberries and raspberries.

The value in monetary terms is worth a staggering £690 million a year to the UK economy.

Hawk explained that the most obvious reasons for the decline in the “forgotten bee” population are climate change, the removal of hedges and the use of pesticides.

Wildflowers, the staple food of a number of bees, only thrive in impoverished soil. Another factor that surprised us is the huge consequence of an increase in managed hives in recent years – honey bees are “thugs” who drive out other species to get to the pollen first.

One hive has an average of 40,000–60,000 bees, each bee foraging in a 1–3 mile radius.

Honey bees must gather nectar from two million flowers to make one pound of honey, with the average bee only making around a twelfth of a teaspoon of honey in its lifetime.

I could “drone on” for hours about this fascinating subject but had better end with sharing what we can do to help give our precious “forgotten bees” a chance:

• Try leaving patches of lawn unmown and rewild verges and hedges.
• Plant bee-friendly plants, such as hollyhocks, cosmos, buddleia and lavender.
• Create a bee “hotel” in a sunny spot.
   

Dee Taylor, Reepham WI