Twilight of the bees

Oil on thin, italian, sintered ceramic slab

Ceramic slab is frost-resistant, none-pored, none-absorbent. Top quality material, very aesthetical.

size 50 x 50 cm

beautifully framed

They are small and inconspicuous, so we often don't even realise what we have thanks to them. They don't just give us honey, they also put fruit, vegetables and coffee on the table. And thanks to bees, nature as we know it looks the same. Or at least it used to...

Four-fifths of flowering plants are pollinated by insects. Without bees, we would lose almost a third of our crops - and some crops would not be harvested at all because they depend almost exclusively on insect pollination, such as currants and other small fruits. Some flowering plants would disappear from the landscape and entire rare ecosystems, such as heathland, would probably disappear. Without bees, we would probably face an economic crisis, against which the current one seems to be a mere prelude. How much more expensive would food be if workers with brushes had to enter flowering fields and orchards and pollinate every blossom, as they do in the pear orchards of China's Sichuan province, where bees have been inadvertently wiped out by pesticides in the past? Britain's Friends of the Earth calculated that if the "services" of bees had to be replaced by humans, it would cost the local economy £1.8 billion (£54 billion) each year.

How to help bees at home?

-  from early spring until autumn, there should always be something blooming in your garden to give pollinators something to eat. Leave some of the lawn to flowering meadow plants and cut it gradually so that the insects do not lose all their food sources at once.

-  flowers, and border insect-poor vegetable beds with them. Flowers suitable for bees: crocuses, dandelions, dandelions, dandelions, daisies, sunflowers, honeysuckles, thimbleberries. Herbs: lemon balm, rosemary, sage, lavender, sweet clover. Climbing plants for pergolas include honeysuckle, ornamental shrubs include willow or dogwood

-  insects also need a water source in the garden - for example, a bird feeder

-  for nesting, wild pollinators need various cavities and holes in wood, dirt, bricks, etc. You can prepare various houses for them

Quotation by Míla Zemanová Palánová from an article in the professional journal “Seventh Generation”