“Do bees need weeds?”

Learn the secrets of bees, ants and slugs. Gareth Richards and Holly Farrell share their insights

Learn the secrets of bees, slugs and ants, and discover their roles in the garden

AHumans are just whippersnappers in evolutionary terms. Honeybees have been on the wing in search of flowers for around 35 million years, while we in our current form have been plodding about for just a couple of hundred thousand. That’s less than 1% of the time bees have existed. What’s more, we’ve only called plants ‘weeds’ since the dawn of agriculture, in the last few millennia. Do bees care that we think a plant is a weed? No!

There’s no unifying biological characteristic to weeds other than humans think they’re ‘plants growing in the wrong place’. A flower is a flower, whether it’s a buddleia growing in the cracks of an abandoned building or a beautiful cornflower in an organic meadow. The fact that it’s there at all is what matters most to bees.

Weeds are often the first plants to rush in after man has bulldozed, dug or paved over our precious earth. The fact that they can turn such wounds into sweet nectar for bees means they deserve a little respect. Many weeds are valuable bee plants and will help turn even barren wasteland into an insect paradise.

Some non-native weeds can be particularly valuable for bees as they provide abundant nectar in late summer and early autumn, which many native plants don’t. There can be a bit of a gap in what beekeepers call the ‘nectar flow’ and buddleia, for instance, helps fill that gap.

Perfect bowling green lawns might look pleasing to the human eye but to bees they might as well be green-coloured concrete. If you care about bees, don’t use herbicides on your lawn (avoid any product with the word ‘weed’ in its name) and consider leaving parts uncut during spring and early summer. Your turf will blossom with nectar-rich daisies, clover and dandelions and the bees will love you for it.

Weeds can help turn even barren wasteland into an insect paradise