How to make a Bee Cafe! | Maddie Moate

hi everyone i'm maddie and welcome back to my channel by now you probably know that i really love bees my mum and i we keep a hive it's just over there of about 40 000 girls who pollinate the flowers around us and they make delicious honey but not everyone's lucky enough to have the space or the time to dedicate to a hive so today i'm going to show you a way that you can help the bees that come and visit you no matter where you live [Music] bees will travel about two miles in search of flowers with nectar and pollen for food especially in towns and cities this can be a really long exhausting journey before they even find something to eat so you can help them out by making them a bee cafe to help them along the way it doesn't matter if you've got a small garden or a big garden or no garden at all all you need is a space for a small container with a couple of cheap and easy to find materials the first thing you want to do is have a good thing about where you're going to put your bee cafe it's got to be somewhere easy for the bees to get to but also somewhere that you can get to so you can freshen it up and give it a tidy once in a while so you could use a hanging basket like this one maybe you could get a tub that sits on a windowsill if you're short of space but today i'm just going to use a big old pot that can go on a patio next you want to gather all of your bits together i've already got my pot but i'm also going to use a shallow tray if you wanted to you could just make one out of the bottom of a juice carton i've collected some stones in different sizes from the garden i've got some water in the watering can soil and plants and seeds but more about those later okay first we're going to prepare the pot and i'm going to start by tipping in the stones i collected from the garden and these will help with drainage when we eventually water our bee cafe i'm going to film this with the gopro so you can see what i'm doing in goes our stones oh they're so heavy make sure you keep just a few stones back and now we're going to fill the pot about two-thirds full of compost [Music] all right pot is now ready for plants now you could go and buy some from the garden center or grow them from seeds but the important thing is that you pick ones that are the bee's favorites [Music] a bee sees blue and purple colors best so any flower that's blue or purple is going to be a big hit and i've got some lavender here when it flowers it's going to look like this and the bees absolutely love it it smells amazing for us too and next a bee loves a daisy shaped flower because it looks a bit like a target and this yellow part in the middle helps to guide them towards the nectar and the pollen that's there this type of daisy is called margarite but any daisy shaped flower will do and then finally i've got some ivy and ivy's great because it stays green all year round and it flowers in the autumn which is perfect if you want your bees to come and stop off and have a little snack later on in the year of course if you wanted to you could always take your favorite grown up to garden center and see what packets of seeds are on offer and quite often they have this little icon on them that will tell you if they're good for pollinators like our bees personally i love growing plants from seeds and seeing them pop out all fresh and new from the ground but it can take quite a long time for flowers to grow so today i'm using pot plants [Music] whether you're starting with seeds or plants now it's time to get them in the soil so if like me you're using plants in pots you need to get them out so take away any labels then you gently tip the plant upside down give it a tap and then you can just squeeze and twist the pot off if you think the roots need a bit of a loosen and you can give them a bit of a tickle just to free them up a little bit and then place it in the pot where you think you want it to go now if you're using a trailing plant like ivy like i am then you want to make sure that that goes on the edge let's take that pot off and place that about there so daisy if you want to come just about here like so that one came out easily tickle the roots just loosen them a little bit and then place it in the pot where you want it to go make sure there's a bit of space between all of your plants too because you want to give them room to grow and then when you're happy with the position get some more soil surround your plant and then pat everything down with your fingers oh it's just started to rain well that's too loud okay so where were we a bit more compost around the front just to tuck in the iv there you go buddy right there in now they just need a bit of water remember to keep these plants watered along with any other pots and plants you might have because all of this is going to provide fantastic food for the bees but like us bees don't just need food they need water too and that is where our shallow tray comes in i'm gonna bring you a bit closer get your tray and then just push it into the compost at the front of the bee cafe and then take the stones that you had left over from earlier and place them just at the bottom of the dish okay once you've done that you want to fill it just halfway with some water what you've done is created a safe place for the beast to drink so they can stand on the stones and keep dry whilst they sip at the water then if you want to get your recycled bottle caps and just push those into the compost as well i think they look like stepping stones which is quite sweet but what you can do later on in the year is when your plants have stopped flowering you can fill these with a mixture of sugar and water and it means your bees will continue to have something to eat and there you go now we just need to find somewhere to put it so with food to eat water to drink and some sugary liquid to keep them going in the cooler months this is the perfect one pot stop bee cafe but don't be surprised if other insects stop by as well in fact if you want to attract butterflies then you could always chop up some pieces of orange their favorite put them on skewers like i have here and add those to your cafe this is so much fun to make if you have a go then make sure you take some pictures and send them to me on social media subscribe to the youtube channel for more b videos stay curious and i'll see you soon bye so good [Music] you

Channel: Maddie Moate

Views: 273,111

Keywords: how to make a bee cafe, how to, make, bee, cafe, bee cafe, how to make a bee b&b, how to harvest honey, beekeeping with maddie, honey bees, diy, youtube kids, learning, flowers, nectar, pollen, daisy, daisies, ivy, lavender, pot, windowsill, gardening, maddie, moate, maddie cbeebies, maddie do you know?, do you know? maddie, cbeebies, education, science, biology, environment, teachers, activity

Id: lfbE5AUG5tM

Length: 7min 46sec (466 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 22 2019