We’re pleased to announce the launch of the Blooms for Bees mobile app and website!
There’s a real buzz around pollinators currently, and rightly so. Across the board, numbers of pollinating insects are falling and without them many of the plants and foods we rely on would either disappear or not be produced in sufficient quantities to meet demand. Among pollinators, bumblebees are overlooked but without these familiar and much loved insects we’d loose tomatoes, cucumbers and many other familiar foods from our diets.
So finding out how to support bumblebees is vital and you can help using the app and website. Since the intensification of agricultural practices after the 2nd World War the UK has lost more than 90% of it’s unimproved, flower rich meadows; precisely those areas bumblebees relied on. There’s not much chance of us seeing these areas returned to a condition that will support wildlife and so gardens stand to be among the most important lifelines for our bees. Making sure the plants we grow are bumblebee friendly is therefore critical to their survival and that’s essentially what this project is all about – finding out which garden flowers are best for bumblebees.
For more information about the free, citizen science mobile app and website see our Blooms for Bees project page. We’d also recommend checking out the project’s video which clearly explains how to get the most out of the app.