It was a quiet Irish morning when Paul Handrick realized: to truly “save the bees,” honeybees weren’t the answer. Wild native bees needed their own haven—and so, in 2017, the world’s first native bee sanctuary was born in Ireland, sparking a global movement rooted in hope, habitat, and real change.
Irish conservationist Paul Handrick, guided by a deep love for the wild and a gentle optimism, bought a small farm in County Wicklow in 2011. By 2017, he and his wife Clare-Louise Donelan had transformed fields into a living haven for wild native bees.
Unlike popular honeybee hives, Handrick’s sanctuary does not keep honeybees — and for good reason. Honeybees, of which there are nine species worldwide, now vastly outnumber the nearly 20,000 wild bee species, and they compete for the same forage. Worse, they can transmit disease while masking the true plight of wild native pollinators. In Handrick’s view, focusing on honeybees distracts from the deeper crisis facing solitary and bumble bees.
A Sanctuary Rooted In Hope—And Hard Work
The sanctuary’s fields of sunflowers, phacelia, clover, and other pollinator-friendly plants are nutrient-rich and bloom in sequence, ensuring continuous forage through spring, summer, and autumn. These flowering fields also double as winter nourishment, where seed heads feed birds and wildlife once the bees are done.
Handrick and Donelan practice minimal intervention: no pesticides, no treated soils, and no manicured lawns—just wildflower havens, let to bloom. “Once you do the right thing for bees, it works for species right across the board,” says Handrick. Their story resonates far beyond Ireland—supporters worldwide have written to say they’ve changed their gardens after learning about the sanctuary.
The Vital Underground World: Ground-Nesting Bees
Now, the most important fourth point: over 70 percent of all bee species are ground-nesting—these tunnel-dwelling bees dig burrows in bare, loose soil, and will never use bee hotels or hives. They face unique threats: heavy mulch, compacted lawns, and synthetic ground covers block their nesting sites.
The Bee Conservancy and experts emphasize: to help these solitary pollinators, one must deliberately leave patches of exposed soil, avoid heavy mulch in some areas, and allow a bit of “messy” to persist in gardens—or better yet, replace lawns with wildflower mosaics.
In contrast, well-meaning but misguided installs of honeybee hives or ornamental bee hotels won’t support ground-nesting bees; worse, they may harm wild natives by encouraging competition for limited resources.
Mixed Efforts: Nest Boxes, Workshops, And Cautionary Insights
Elsewhere in Australia, passionate individuals like Clancy Lester (the “Bee Man”) build hundreds of bee hotels to support solitary cavity-nesting bees. At university-led workshops, participants learn to make bamboo-reed and drilled-wood “hotels” to provide nesting “rooms” for some native species. Rockhampton Zoo launched a community workshop where over 30 people built safe nesting sites to support local solitary bees—of which only around 11 species live in hives; the vast majority are solitary ground or cavity nesters.
These grassroots efforts show public enthusiasm—but experts now caution against overreliance on bee hotels. A study in Perth across 14 sites found that European honeybees compete heavily with native species, reducing female offspring and increasing mortality among wild bees. As a result, scientists now recommend limiting urban honeybee hives, managing feral hives, and instead increasing native flowering plants to support local populations.
The research clearly demonstrates that, for both cavity-dwellers and ground-nesters, habitat quality—not honeybee proliferation—is the key to biodiversity.
What You Can Do: Guidance From Global Experts
Practical steps inspired by these projects include:
- Plant a bee buffet: Mix native wildflowers of various species and bloom times to feed bees consistently throughout the growing season. This supports not just bees, but the entire ecosystem.
- Provide ground nesting habitat: Leave patches of bare, loose soil (untreated by mulch or compaction) so that underground-nesting bees can tunnel and breed.
- If using bee hotels, use responsibly: Design them with a variety of hole sizes, place them low and in sunlight, and clean or replace nesting materials annually to prevent disease or occupancy by wasps or pests.
- Limit honeybee density: Urban beekeeping can harm native bees when densities are too high. Experts recommend restricting hives in sensitive ecological areas and focusing instead on planting native flowering trees like eucalyptus, bottlebrush, and myrtle.
- Support community efforts: Workshops like those at Rockhampton Zoo show how community action helps; you can join or start local initiatives to build awareness and nest structures responsibly.
Storytelling Snapshot: A Garden Transforms
Imagine a neglected patch of soil in a suburban backyard—once covered in turf and bare dirt, now blooming with clover, lavender, wildflowers, and a single strip of loose earth. A bee hotel leans nearby, filled with bamboo tubes of various diameters. Over months, leaf-cutter bees seal cavities with leaf fragments; mining bees burrow underground in adjoining soil. You visit on a dawn in spring: sun warms the flowers, bees emerge with hums like strings of miniature engines. You realize that every bloom matters, every insect counts, and that small changes in your own garden ripple outward.
Conclusion: A Hopeful Blueprint
From Ireland’s world-first native bee sanctuary to community nests in Australia, the message is clear: saving native bees is not about honey, hives, or Instagram-worthy visuals. It’s about creating real habitat—above ground and below—and centering native species, not managed honeybees. When people plant native blooms, preserve patches of soil, and respect wild bees’ needs, they ignite a silent revolution of biodiversity.
In Paul Handrick’s words: “every day needs to be World Bee Day”—because the work of saving these unsung pollinators is ongoing, and urgent, and filled with hope.
Sources:
Positive News
The Bee Conservancy
ABC News
The Guardian
