Who are the garden pollinators?

Bees are the best known of the pollinators. There are about 270 species in the UK alone, and more than 20,000 in the world. The most common and famous of bees is the domestic honeybee, a slender brownish insect that we keep in hives and from which – as the name suggests – we gather honey. But ask someone to draw a bee and most people will produce something fat with yellow and black stripes.

This is undoubtedly a bumblebee. Bumblebees come in other colour combinations too, some with endearing bright red bottoms; we have 26 different species in the UK. Furry and rotund, they are often the most conspicuous flower visitors.Much more easily overlooked are the solitary bees, which make up the bulk of UK species but tend to be small, often darkcoloured insects that can be easily mistaken for a fly or a wasp.

Bees are closely related to wasps – in fact they evolved from them – and we should not forget that many types of wasp are important pollinators too.

The second most familiar pollinators are surely our butterflies, delicate and beautiful insects with wings clothed in shimmering coloured scales.

Unsung heroes

Though the less popular cousin of the butterfly, the moth is possibly even more important as a pollinator. Strongly scented, pale flowers like nicotiana and honeysuckle have evolved to be pollinated by moths.

There are many other pollinating insects, including beetles, numerous types of flies, like hoverflies, picture-winged flies and soldier flies, and more besides; in the UK alone it is estimated that more than 4,000 types of insect are pollinators.

Insects are incredibly diverse and fascinating when you get to know them, and April is a great time to take up insect spotting. Keep an eye out for bee flies (flies that are pretending to be bees), fluffy balls of ginger fur that hover by spring flowers and use a long, rigid proboscis to drink the nectar. If you have lungwort in your garden, you are likely to see the wonderful hairyfooted flower bee, one of our bigger solitary bees, the male has great tufts of fur on the ends of his middle set of legs.

There are about 270 species of bee in the UK alone, and more than 20,000 in the world

Bees, like this male early bumblebee, have hairs on their bodies that attract pollen through electrostatic forces

The meadow brown butterfly feeds on nectar from a variety of garden plants, including echinaceas

The hummingbird hawk-moth feeds on the wing using its long proboscis

Honeybees gather pollen and take it back to their hives

Hoverflies are important garden pollinators and eat aphids, too

A male hairy-footed flower bee feeds on comfrey using its long tongue