Bees and other beneficial insects — all need fresh water to drink. You can provide this in your back yard with a DIY insect bath.
Make a pollinator bath
Providing water for pollinators is both cheap and easy.
There is a number of ways that you can provide water for bees and pollinators, you can go fancy with a birdbath or you can go down the DIY path and use an old bucket or frypan. It’s completely up to you.
Regardless of your choice of the container, the idea is the same. Bees and a lot of other pollinators are terrible swimmers. If you just fill up a bucket or birdbath you will find that for all your good intentions you drown more bees than you help.
So how do we solve this problem…the answer is simple, all you need to do is either place something in the container that floats on the waters surface like corks that the bees and other pollinators can land and sit on or place something in the water that is large enough to rise out of the water like little islands. The bees will land on these and walk to the water’s edge to drink.
Replace the water every few days to eliminate mosquito larvae and to stop it from going slimy, I am not sure the bees and insects care but it looks better in your yard if it is not a bowl of slime.
Leaving water out for pollinators during the warmer months is a simple thing to do, it will also help the local bird population during times of high temperature, they don’t mind sharing.
Water helps bees with digestion and keeping their hives cool.
