Holland Park – a hotspot for wild bees

Holland Park has always had bees. They are important pollinators, along with butterflies, hoverflies and beetles. While you might be familiar with honey bees, they are just one of over 240 species of bee in the UK, and perform less than a third of pollination. The majority of pollination is down to wild bee species, such as bumblebees and solitary nesting leafcutter and mason bees.

If the park’s bees are to thrive, it is essential to provide appropriate habitats to support them with foraging opportunities, as well as shelter and nesting sites. The main causes of bee decline are man-made stressors, including habitat loss, degradation and fragmentation. 

For many years, Holland Park has hosted managed honey bees in hives. Keeping bees in hives offers no benefit to the ecology of the park, though the local community does like to buy the honey, when there is some. 

The RBKC Ecology Service is working to help bees and other pollinators by developing a Bee Superhighway that aims to increase the number of linked pollinator hotspots right across the borough. Holland Park is intended to be one of those hotspots. The approach will be to support a healthy wild bee population, instead of managing honey bees in hives, which compete with wild bees for limited resources. 

We can now look forward to bee banks, nesting sites and flowers that bees can’t resist, all of which will serve as a valuable way of engaging children in wildlife.

Jennie Kettlewell

[February 2023]