25/08/2026
Help the pollinators: how to make a safe drinking station. In hot weather, bees, butterflies, hoverflies and other garden insects need water — but they drown easily in smooth-sided containers. A few simple tricks give them a drink without risk 🐝
Four ways to build a safe waterer:
1️⃣ Marbles or pebbles: put a shallow saucer or plant pot base outside, add glass marbles or small smooth pebbles, and fill with water only halfway up the marbles. Insects land on the exposed tops and drink safely without falling in.
2️⃣ Damp sponge: a soaked natural sponge sitting in a shallow saucer with a little water is ideal for the smallest garden bees — solitary bees like the tawny mining bee and red mason bee, and for hoverflies. They drink from the wet surface without any risk of drowning.
3️⃣ Rough branch at an angle: sit a rough twig or piece of unstripped bark diagonally in a glass jar of water. It becomes an escape ramp for butterflies, moths, ladybirds — and any frog or newt that ends up in there.
4️⃣ Wet sand or mud patch: British solitary bees, especially mason bees, need damp mud not only to drink but to seal the cells of their nests. A small tray of wet sand or a slightly muddy patch kept damp is one of the most useful things you can put out for the mason bees that pollinate British apple trees.
What to avoid:
❌ Smooth-sided deep containers with no landing spot — birdbaths with vertical walls, buckets, wide bowls of open water. These are traps that quietly drown bees and hoverflies through the summer.
Practical tips:
- Change the water every two or three days so it doesn't go stagnant and doesn't become a mosquito breeding site.
- Place the waterer in partial shade — beside a shrub, at the base of a hedge, on the north side of a pot.
- Position it near the plants that are already attracting pollinators. A drinker two metres from a lavender bush in flower will be found within a day.
- If you have a birdbath, add a few large stones or a piece of untreated wood so it doubles as a pollinator waterer.
A good drinking station starts hosting visitors within a day or two — bumblebees, mason bees, honeybees, hoverflies, butterflies and small wasps all use them once the word gets round 🌿
🐝 💧 🦋
