Why Solitary Bees Are as Important as Honeybees

Key takeaways

The key figure: In France, there are nearly 1,000 bee species, but only one makes honey and lives in a hive. The other 970+ are solitary, wild, and discreet bees.

Why they are essential:

• They forage in all weathers, even cool and cloudy
• They stay loyal to your garden (radius of 150 to 300 meters)
• They visit up to 60 flowers per minute (3 to 4 times more than a honey bee)
• To pollinate an orchard, 250 mason bees are equivalent to 3 honey bee hives

What threatens them: habitat loss, pesticides, monocultures, invasive species (including the Asian hornet), climate change. Approximately 1 in 10 wild bee species is threatened with extinction in France.

What you can do: plant simple, native flowers, leave an unmown wild corner, preserve bare soil and dead wood, ban pesticides, and install a well-designed insect hotel.

Honey bee or solitary bee: what's the difference?

Let's make introductions.

The honey bee (Apis mellifera)

• Lives in colonies of 30,000 to 80,000 individuals
• Inhabits a hive maintained by a beekeeper
• Produces honey, wax, propolis
• A queen, workers, males: a highly organized society
• It is a domesticated species, like cows or sheep

Solitary bees

• Live alone (the name is explicit!)
• No hive, no queen, no colony
• Each female builds her own nest and lays her eggs there
• No honey, no wax — just pollination, lots of pollination
• They are wild species, completely free

And they are everywhere: in low walls, in hollow stems, in bare soil, in empty snail shells. You probably encounter them every day without knowing it.

A few portraits of solitary bees (you'll love them)

The European orchard bee (Osmia cornuta)

Small, round, hairy, reddish-brown and black. Appears as soon as the first fine days of March arrive. Number 1 pollinator of fruit trees (apple, pear, cherry trees). Without it, far fewer fruits.

The violet carpenter bee (Xylocopa violacea)

Huge (up to 3 cm), black with metallic blue-violet reflections. Often mistaken for a large bumblebee. Nests in dead wood. Spectacular and completely harmless.

The tawny mining bee (Andrena fulva)

Small, reddish like a fox. Nests in the ground, digging small mounds of earth. Visible from April in lawns and embankments.

The leafcutter bee (Megachile)

Cuts perfectly oval pieces of leaves to line its nest. If you see neat round holes in your rose leaves... that's it. And that's good news.

The sweat bee (Halictus)

Very small, sometimes metallic green or blue. Nests in the ground. Active from May to September. Pollinates tomatoes, zucchinis, strawberries.

And there are... 965 other species in mainland France alone.

Why are they so important?

Here's the big secret that solitary bees jealously guard: they are often more effective pollinators than honey bees.

Why?

1. They forage in all weathers

Honey bees only come out in good weather, above 15°C, with no wind. Solitary bees, however, forage in cool, cloudy, even light rain. This is crucial in spring, when conditions are changeable.

2. They are loyal to their garden

A honey bee can fly 3 km from its hive. A solitary bee stays within a radius of 150 to 300 meters. Result: it intensively pollinates your garden rather than foraging elsewhere.

3. They transport pollen "dry"

Honey bees wet pollen with nectar to stick it to their legs. Solitary bees carry it dry on their hairy undersides. Consequence: pollen falls more easily on neighboring flowers, thus pollinating better.

4. They visit more flowers per minute

A mason bee can visit up to 60 flowers per minute. A honey bee: 15 to 20. Solitary bees are 3 to 4 times more efficient for equivalent pollen.

A thought-provoking figure: to pollinate an apple orchard, you need 3 honey bee hives or only 250 European orchard bees. Something to ponder.

A silent and worrying decline

While we are (rightly) concerned about the decline of honey bees, solitary bees are disappearing even faster, and no one is talking about it.

According to European studies, approximately 1 in 10 wild bee species is threatened with extinction in France. Some have already disappeared from entire regions.

Why this decline?

• Habitat loss: hedgerows removed, concrete soils, dead wood eliminated
• Pesticides: neonicotinoids, glyphosate, "domestic" insecticides
• Disappearance of wildflowers: excessive mowing, monocultures
• Invasive species: and yes, the Asian hornet also preys on solitary bees, not just those in hives
• Climate change: mismatch between bee emergence and the flowering of their host plants

It's a discreet collapse, because no one is counting them. But it's very real.

How to protect them in your garden?

Good news: protecting solitary bees is simpler than protecting a hive. No beekeeping needed, no equipment, no suit. Just a few actions.

1. Plant simple, native flowers

Lavender, borage, phacelia, sage, clover, ivy, savory. Avoid highly "transformed" double flowers: bees cannot access them. To learn more about good pollinator-attracting plant associations, check out our article on plant associations that attract pollinators.

2. Leave a "wild" corner in your garden

An unmown area, with wild grasses, dead wood, a few stones. It's a natural hotel for solitary bees. More effective than any commercial insect hotel.

3. Preserve bare soil

Many solitary bees nest in the ground. A sunny patch of garden without mulch is a real luxury for them.

4. Keep dead wood and hollow stems

Raspberry canes, bamboo, reeds, old drilled logs. Carpenter bees and mason bees love them.

5. Ban pesticides — ALL of them

Including "natural" ones. Nettle manure or black soap, when sprayed on open flowers, kills solitary bees. Treat in the evening, never on open flowers.

6. Install an insect hotel — but the right kind

Avoid "decorative hotels" from garden centers. Prefer logs drilled with 4 to 8 mm holes, or bundles of hollow stems (elderberry, bamboo). Facing south, 1 meter from the ground.

And the Asian hornets in all this?

An important side note: we often talk about the Asian hornet as a predator of honey bee hives. But it also preys on solitary bees when it encounters them.

Except for solitary bees, it's even more serious: they don't have a colony to compensate for losses. A killed mason bee female means her entire offspring disappears (15 to 20 eggs lost for the next season).

Protecting bees, whether domestic or wild, involves the same action in spring: intercepting Asian hornet queens before they establish their colonies. To understand the precise benefit of this action, consult our dedicated page on spring trapping. It is the most effective and least costly moment for biodiversity.

Seeing your garden differently

We tend to see biodiversity as something distant, wild, exotic — something that happens "elsewhere," in Amazonian forests or coral reefs. This is a mistake.

Biodiversity is also that little reddish mason bee emerging from your low wall in April, that violet carpenter bee visiting your wisteria, that tiny sweat bee silently pollinating your zucchinis.

They are there, in your garden, free, tireless, essential. And they need us. Not grand gestures, just small acts of attention.

Bzzz, see you soon, Buzette.

Want to protect all the bees in your garden, both honey and solitary? Discover Hornet EcoTrap, the selective trap made in France that targets Asian hornets without capturing bees, bumblebees, or other pollinators.

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