Solitary Bee Week takes place this year from July 1st - July 7th 2019. It's a campaign that we started in 2018 to spread the word about our solitary bees, after we realised how many blank looks we would get when we talked about solitary bees, people would ask about honey and stings and be unaware that actually 90% of our bees species in the UK are solitary, don't live in hives, don't have a queen and don't produce honey.
We'd love as many people as possible to get involved with Solitary Bee Week this year and help us to spread the word about the 'other' bees, and we've got lots of ways that you can join us.
The Solitary Bee Week website has a section where we ask you to earn your stripes by making a pledge for the bees, we've put together 6 things that you can do to help the bees, from planting a bee-friendly plant to giving a talk to your local school or community group.
You can check out the Solitary Bee Week website for full details of all the events happening during the week, such as our ask the expert hour on Twitter, Solitary Bee Poetry day for budding creatives and bee lovers and our main event, where we ask you to wear your stripes to #earnyourstripes.
Wear your stripes.
Last year hundreds of people got involved and wore their stripes to spread the word that bees are all different and come in all sorts of shapes, sizes, and stripes! From the staff at Seasalt, to the team at Dewsign and Poppy Treffry, to Cornish primary schools, social media was buzzing with talk of the bees and stripey happy people. You can check out the gallery on our website here and this year we're asking you to wear your stripes on Wednesday 3rd July and join in on social media using #earnyourstripes #solitarybeeweek
