8 Easy Tips to Protect Bees
So, what can you do, on any corner of the globe, to help protect our precious pollinators?
- Plant flowers and flowering trees! Perhaps you don’t have your own patch of earth to establish a garden but even a few herb plants on a balcony or at a local school or community garden make a difference to our pollinators, providing food as they navigate the landscape. Choose native plants when possible and untreated seeds. Search “best plants for pollinators in Singapore”
- Stop spraying pesticides and herbicides. Even home use and “organic” pesticides can damage local bee populations. If you must spray, never spray flowering blooms during sunlight hours and always follow the printed instructions exactly.
- Learn where your food comes from. Find ways to meet the people who produce the food you eat, choose spray-free, organic, or regenerative growers and ask them about their practices and let them know pollinator protection is important to you. Better yet, grow some of your own food!
- Volunteer with a local conservation organization to help plant and restore native ecosystems near you.
- Make a bee watering hole for your yard or balcony. Bees need clean water just like us! Keep a bowl of water with stones or sticks for the bees to land on so they can stay hydrated in warm weather.
- Don’t be afraid. If you see a bee, stay calm and carry on. Bees are busy creatures, focused on their important work of foraging and pollination- they have no interest in stinging you. If you see a beehive, opt for bee relocation over bee.
- Take time to smell the flowers and watch the bees. Go out into nature and observe bees for yourself! Share what you notice and have learned with loved ones. Join a citizen science project. Curiosity leads to advocacy, and this is especially important to foster in our next generation nature lovers.
“In the end, we only conserve what we love, we will only love what we understand, and we will understand only what we are taught” - Baba Dioum