Spring 2026 at Guy’s Memorial Gardening – added Red Mason Bee cocoons following better planting for bees to provide nectar and pollen sources and nesting material
It is now three years since we started working with KCL. Unfortunately, the 3 requirements to provide suitable habit for solitary bees has not been met in that time at most sites.
- Food for bees (a diversity of nectar and pollen sources from February to October) eg. Wallflowers in spring and Salvia in Autumn
- Nesting sites for cavity-nesting solitary bees
- Nesting material for cavity-nesting solitary bees eg. Lamb’s ear for Wool Carder Bees, Roses for Leafcutter bees
Despite putting up suitable bee hotels and bee observation boxes in potentially suitable sites, sufficient nectar and pollen-rich flowers, and flowers grown for nesting material are all still sadly lacking.
The only exception, when we visited in spring 2026 to assess the success of bee hotels/boxes, appeared to be Guy’s Memorial Garden where Lamb’s ear, hardy geraniums (Cranesbill) and Skimmia had all been planted. As a result, we decided to introduce Red mason bee cocoons here for educational purposes.
At Great Dover Street Apartments, a leafcutter bee had made a nest. We had overwintered the cocoons and returned them to the bee hotel.
There was no sign of any bee nesting activity at any of the other sites (Denmark Hill, Stamford Street Appts, Honor Oak, other sites at Guy’s including the Waste Garden whose wild flowers bloom too late to feed spring-flying Red mason bees) mainly due to the reasons below.
Why?
- Lack of water – even the most drought-tolerant plants (apart from sedum, agapanthus and kniphofia) require some water, even Mediterranean plants. Urban Bees spent the summer 2025 visiting each site with nesting boxes to assess installing a timed, irrigation system attached to an outside tap to drip feed a few minutes of water each night during the summer. Unfortunately, water regulations prevented this approach. The alternative was to rely on the garden maintenance contractors watering when on site. In all cases this wasn’t going to be enough during a dry spring and a summer drought.
- Lack of co-ordination between Urban Bees and the Green Team contractors. Suggestions for the best plants for bees were passed through a third party to the Green Team. Our most successful projects where solitary bees thrive is where Urban Bees creates its own habitat for bees, or works very closely with existing gardeners.
- As a result, Urban Bees secured a small budget to plant spring bulbs and perennials in autumn 2025 in gaps where the Green Team hadn’t planted. But a dry spring prevented these flowers from flourishing and feeding bees. And some were removed by the Green Team, who it appeared hadn’t been informed about our work. We also planted a Crab apple tree at Honor Oak playing fields.
Summer 2026 – no budget was allocated for Urban Bees to conduct educational bee safaris or workshops or staff or students. This was unfortunate as the Red mason bees in the bee observation boxes would have provided a window into the world of relatively unknown solitary bees.
Next steps A new KCL Biodiversity Action Plan is being drawn up. Urban Bees looks forward to discuss with KCL’s Sustainability Project Manager actions and potential opportunities to collaborate to improve habitat for wild bees on the KCL estate and to introduce and educate staff, students and local residents/children about the importance of wild bees and how we can all take small steps to help them.