Dandelions, which will start flowering in the UK this month, provide a valuable food source for early pollinators. With spring on its way, insects such as solitary bees, honeybee’s, butterflies and hoverflies will be coming out of hibernation hungry, on the hunt for food! There are 240 species of dandelion in the UK, each dandelion head containing up to 100 individual flowers, known as florets, which contain nectar and pollen.
It is said that if dandelions were rare, people would be fighting over them, but because they are common, we do not think twice about mowing over them and picking and spraying them, when really we just need to leave them and allow them to flower because grass filled with dandelions is far better for bees than a weed-free one.
The global mass of insects is falling by 2.5% a year meaning many could be extinct within a century. Possible causes of the decline have been identified as; habitat destruction, including intensive agriculture, the use of pesticides, particularly insecticides, urbanization, and industrialization, introduced species and climate change.
The charity Buglife, encourages people to leave a strip of garden that is cut only once in the autumn and once in the spring. A lot of older houses will have been built on old meadows meaning the wildflowers will come up quite quickly, whilst newer houses may take longer if they have had turf put down. Leaving your grass to grow 8-10cm which will allow clovers, daisies and buttercups to flower.
Glyphosate, the world’s most widely used herbicide and one long touted as harmless to animals, might be taking a toll on honey bees. The chemical appears to disrupt the microbial community in the bees’ digestive system, making them more vulnerable to infection. The discovery adds another potential reason for the alarming decline of honey bees in parts of the world, as well as that of other pollinators that live in colonies, such as bumble bees.
The use of herbicides to control weeds has been a common practice in global agriculture, mainly with the objective to increase agricultural production. However, when these chemicals are used in an uncontrolled manner, they can cause impacts on non-target organisms, especially on those that live in aquatic environments. In animals, herbicides can act in several tissues or organs and, sometimes, are associated with tumorigenic processes.
Herbicides can be carried into rivers by rainwater or be leached to groundwater polluting these environments; some herbicides can accumulate in the food chain and are toxic for animals and humans.
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