Bees (Clade *Anthophila*) are very important pollinators, but have recently seen a big decline in populations numbers in the recent decades due to bee-killing pesticides, climate change, and the changed use of agricultural lands where monoculture becomes more frequent. 

<center>https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/99/Apis_mellifera_flying.jpg</center>
*A honeybee. [Image by Muhammad Mahdi Karim, posted with the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Apis_mellifera_flying.jpg)*.

I’m sure you have already heard a lot about [the threat the bees are currently facing](http://sos-bees.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/BeesInDecline.pdf), so let’s rather take a look at how we can help save them. There are over 20,000 different species of bees, and most perform some sort of pollination service, and they are found on all parts in the world – except for Antarctica. 

Most people don't really like bees, but you really should. Without these hard workers, there's no way you would be able to each much fruit, or actually, each much plant-based stuff at all. Without bees to pollinate our crops, we would have huge issues with keeping up the modern agricultural output, and a total extinction of bees would likely lead to most humans dying from not getting enough food to eat. 

## Only mow your lawn every two weeks
Since the bees provide such an important ecosystem service to us by pollinating plants and trees, we obviously spend a lot of time to study their behavior in order to figure out how we can save them from further decline, and a [recently published paper has taken a look at how often it is optimal to mow your lawn](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006320717306201).

<center>https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c4/Anthidium_February_2008-1.jpg</center>
*[Image by Alvesgaspar, posted with the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Anthidium_February_2008-1.jpg)*.

The basis of the experiment was to have homeowners in Springfield, Massachusetts in the United States mow their lawns at certain time intervals, and then the researchers would use insect nets and pan traps to count the amount of bees in the garden. The species and amount of flowering plants on the lawn were also counted and analyzed. 

The homeowners were divided into three groups; one that mowed the lawn every week, one that mowed it every two weeks, and one that mowed it every three weeks. 

The results are actually pretty interesting, and what they found out is that mowing your lawn every two weeks is the optimum for the bees! According to this study, this will allow your garden to support 30 % more bees than both the 1-week and the 3-week group. 

<center>https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/55/Lawn_16l07.JPG</center>
*A lawn where one part (on the right) had not been mown during the entire year. This is obviously a lot longer than 2 weeks, but you can easily guess which side that is preferred by bees and other insects. [Image by Snowmanradio, posted with the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lawn_16l07.JPG)*.

## The reason behind the results
So why is the two week mowing the optimum? The reason is most likely that if you cut it every week, there is simply not enough time for the flowers to bloom and produce nectar. At three weeks, the high grass seemingly made it difficult for the bees to reach the flowers. Two weeks on the other hand provided perfect conditions for the bees. 

As expected, the longer you wait between each mowing, the higher the species richness of the flowers will be, with very few plant species showing up in only one week. There is most likely a point where plant richness will decrease again, but this is after three weeks, and was not measured in this study. 

## More bees, but not a higher diversity
While the biweekly mowing is the most optimal for having more bees in your garden, it might not be the best approach to attract as many different species as possible. While it had 30 % more bees, it was generally dominated by a few species that did not specialize in any special flowers, but rather just used whatever flowers they could. Both the 1-week and the 3-week groups had a higher bee richness (different species) and evenness of the bee species.   

## Other ways to make your garden friendly towards bees
If you care about the bees, then there are of course other things you can do besides just reduce your frequency of mowing the grass. The most important thing is to have bee-friendly flowers. According to [this Wikihow post](https://www.wikihow.com/Create-a-Bee-Friendly-Garden), some good flowers include:
> asters, Black-eyed Susan, clover, columbines, coneflowers, Forget-Me-Not, geranium, goldenrod, heather, honeysuckle, ivy, Joe Pye weed, lupines, Michaelmas daisies, partridge peas, rhododendrons, sedum, sunflowers, tulips, white deadnettle, wild bergamot, wild lilacs, and willows.

In addition, a cool thing to add is a **insect hotel**, and you can buy or create your own that is tailored towards bees. 

The easiest way is to have some logs and drill lots of holes in them, or buy something like the thing you see on the image below and put it up close to your flowers. 

<center>https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9f/Insect_hotel%2C_Tittling.jpg</center>
*[Image by High Contrast, posted with the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Germany license](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Insect_hotel,_Tittling.jpg)*.

## Thanks for reading
I hope you enjoyed this short post about what scientific research say you should do about the frequency of your lawn moving. I for one know that there’s no way I’m going to be mowing it every week this summer, and will gladly enjoy being able to do it less frequently while still having a clean conscious. Anyway, thank for your checking out my post, and have a good day! 

## <center>About @valth</center>
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