Spring has almost sprung – and the bees need our help!

Just yesterday (as I write this, on 04Mar2022) a ginormous bumblebee buzzed past me, and said, “Spring is coming!” Well, not literally, but the message was clear. It reminded me of the fact that ‘our’ planet’s bee population is in serious decline (which is almost certainly our fault), and that if bees disappear then we will all starve to death ourselves just a handful of years later.

I’ve been thinking about turning my lawn into a meadow. I’ve long thought that the very idea of a lawn is a relic of a bygone age; one of the many traditions we’ve inherited from our ancestors that deserve to be consigned to the history books. If we were all to convert our lawns to meadows, that would certainly help the bees – and I for one wouldn’t miss the regular mowing chore!

And then, today, I got an email from 38 Degrees, urging me to sign up for Seeds for Bees. So I did.

Our bees are under threat. Over the last few decades, we’ve lost 97% of our wildflower meadows. [1] Our bees’ food supply is starting to run out. And if they’ve got less food, there’ll be fewer bees to pollinate our crops – which means we’ll all have less food too. [2] To make matters worse, the UK government just authorised emergency use of bee-harming pesticides. [3]

But there’s something we can do today to help improve the situation – by giving our bees the food they need to thrive. If thousands of us plant bee-friendly flowers in our gardens, window boxes or private green spaces, we’ll be doing our bit to save our bees! [4] And we’ve got 60,000 packets to send out to people up and down the country so they can do just that!

So, can you sign up now to get your very own packet of seeds to plant this spring – and chip in for others to get a packet too, if you can? Seeds will be limited to one packet per person, to make sure that as many people as possible can take part!

There’s a lot going on in the world right now. It can leave us feeling powerless and worried for the future. But there are still small things we can do to make our corner of the planet a little better place – including planting wildflowers to support our declining bee population.

It doesn’t matter whether you’ve got a large garden or a plant pot on a windowsill – anyone can plant some seeds to help our bees.

Last year an incredible 60,000 of us planted seeds to help protect our bees. So let’s do it again this year, and make sure that we fill our gardens, window boxes or private green spaces with flower food to help our buzzy friends.

The seeds will need to be planted in the next few weeks, so the more of us who sign up now, the more flowers there’ll be for our bees!

(If you have any questions about the bee-friendly seeds, check out the FAQ page.)

[1] BBC: Wildflowers: important to pollinators, important to people
[2] National Geographic: Insects are vanishing at an alarming rate – but we can save them
The Express: Bees crisis: THIS is what the world loses if bumble bees die out
The Guardian: World’s food supply under ‘severe threat’ from loss of biodiversity
[3] CPM Magazine: Emergency authorisation granted for Cruiser SB
[4] The Conversation: Why urban gardens are crucial for conserving bees and butterflies – and how you can help them
National Geographic: Bumblebees are going extinct in a time of ‘climate chaos’

38 Degrees (lightly edited)

Header image adapted from
‘lavender flowers with bumbled bee‘
by Adonyi Gábor on Unsplash