Where are all the bees?

KittenChops

West Midlands, very rural & surrounded by farmland

Garden out of the front is slowly transitioning to a wild life area / meadow - not cut the grass & allowing native plants to self seed everywhere - goldfinches especially are loving the seed heads. The few neighbours we have seem to be obsessed with mowing everything the minute it grows.

Garden out the back - one side has a decent sized area of ornamental flower beds & a few pots, with a variety of flower shapes including lots of umbellifers & open flowers - other side & the back bordering farmer's grazing field has stinging nettles & brambles, with some cow parsley etc - area of uncut lawn in the middle (clover, buttercups, fox & cubs, ragwort, dandelions etc)

Always overrun with sparrows (love them & their constant bickering!), lots of jackdaws, robins, wrens, starlings, various tits, swallows (although not as many as last year I think), magpies (have obviously done well this year as I'm fed up with their noisy offspring already!), chiff chaffs, blackcaps, rooks, crows, buzzards, tawny owls, barn owl & bats (sorry that was a longer list than I'd intended!) We'd stopped feeding the birds over the last couple of winters, but always leave lots of water out. Helps that our cat couldn't catch anything even if they offered themselves to him!

Before the heat of last week, there were loads of bees here - now not quite as many now that you mention it 🤔 I don't think I've seen any wasps since either. Lots of hoverflies at the moment and the ladybirds seem to got the aphids under control quite nicely

Slinky

Our buddleia is infested with black fly, as it was last year. Last year I ended up having to cut all the damaged flower heads off and they grew again later in the year without a problem. There's precious few ladybirds, the odd ones I get on the washing I transfer to the buddleia.

KittenChops mentioning bats, we haven't seen many of those either this year. We host a bat post recording device for a couple of weeks each year and I think we saw 1 bat in the time it was here. Mind you, that was when we were experiencing large amounts of rain.

The land alongside our garden is a housing association's communal garden which they've been leaving mostly unmown. Perhaps all the insects have decided that's a better proposition for them. In the past we've had bats circling round over there and coming across our garden. We do have a couple of bat boxes up on the side of the house but I don't think they've ever been used. We're having a little more luck with swifts showing interest in our nest boxes, but not sure if they've nested. The one box we see them going into is one without cameras in.

Sapindus

My neighbour had a bees' nest in their lawn. The first bloke they got to come and look at it just said leave them alone and they won't hurt you. Looks like they managed to find someone to kill the bees today though 😢

Slinky

That's sad