What's the buzz on saving bumblebees?

The Bumblebee Conservation Trust is launching a new competition – Pollin-8 – celebrating the amazing ways people create bumblebee friendly spaces, as part of the Trust’s 2021 campaign ‘Bee the Change’.

The Trust was established because of serious concerns about the plight of the bumblebee as the UK’s bumblebee populations have reduced drastically over the last 80 years, with two species becoming nationally extinct and several others have seriously declined.

Aiming to showcase the amazing job bees do pollinating our crops and wildflowers, the Trust has launched the Bee the Change campaign, which promotes the quick, simple ways you can make your local area more bumblebee-friendly.

It doesn’t matter if you live in the city or the countryside. If you have a garden, a flower pot – or no outdoor space at all.

This is where the Pollin-8 challenge comes in, where people are encouraged to show off the flowers they’ve planted to help feed bumblebees.

The theme of the competition is bumblebee-friendly outdoor spaces such as planted containers, including, but not limited to, flower pots, window boxes and hanging baskets), traditional gardens, and community greenspaces like parks, community gardens, public flower displays, and allotment sites.

There will be eight chances for you to show off your bumblebee-friendly planting, with a new competition round every month until November 2021.

May’s theme will be Wildflower lawns - say no to the mow! by leaving their lawn or a patch of it to see what grows. To enter, simply email up to three photos in jpg format of your outdoor space to [email protected], and tell us in up to 200 words why your plants get bumblebees buzzing.

To find out more, visit www.bumblebeeconservation.org/beethechange/pollin-8-competition/