I've been trying to attract bumblebees to nest in my garden for years. My bumblebee nester has made a great home for spiders, but no bumblebees have ever displayed interest.
A recent Which? Gardening report revealed that many shop-bought wildlife homes are not worth buying. The trial included hedgehog homes, bug boxes and bumblebee nesters, and concluded that only solitary bee hotels proved successful, especially home-made ones.
This was no news to me. I've been trying to attract bumblebees to nest in my garden for years. My bumblebee nester has made a great home for spiders, but no bumblebees have ever shown interest. I even added some mouse litter from the local pet shop (some bumblebees nest in old mouse holes so I was trying to recreate the scent). It's so old and unused it's falling apart and it won't be long before the spiders find alternative accommodation. The hedgehog home my mum put in lies unused, despite being sited under a hedge and dutifully packed with fallen leaves and hay.
Attracting wildlife to your garden can be a bit hit and miss. Bumblebees and butterflies, for example, will happily come to our gardens to forage for food, but often choose to breed elsewhere. Growing nectar-rich plants is a good way to entice them in, but they won't nest in your flower beds. Butterflies lay eggs in long grass, nettles and thistles (depending on the species), while bumblebees prefer undisturbed messy areas such as compost heaps, long grass and mouse holes.
My mum grows a huge range of nectar-rich flowers from March through to November, but her garden's too tidy for bees and butterflies to breed in. Her next door neighbours have a messy garden with some long grass and a pond. Every year a colony of buff-tailed bumblebees nests beneath the neighbours' shed and feeds on my mum's flowers, I'm sure the butterflies do the same. My dad has a nest of common carder bumblebees in his ramshackle allotment compost heap, just a short flight to the raspberries, comfrey and clover he grows.
If you want wildlife nesting in your garden, then build log and leaf piles, start a compost heap, leave a messy area, plant nectar-rich flowers and dig a pond. You could also use an old wooden box filled with stems of sunflower, teasel and bamboo to make a solitary bee hotel.
But that's no guarantee - wildlife can choose the most unpredictable places to live. This summer I visited some buff-tailed bumblebees nesting in a concrete path and once I found a red-tailed bumblebee nest in an old duvet that had been slung out and started to go mouldy. I've also seen hedgehogs and kingfishers foraging in Manchester city centre.
So there are no hard and fast rules. Do you have wildlife nesting in your garden? If so, how much success have you had with shop-bought nesters?
See more comments...
