Tell me more about dandelions and pollinators

• To have a healthy balanced diet, bees and other pollinators need to be able to feed on pollen and nectar from a range of different flowers from March through to October.
  

• In Spring, wild bees come out of hibernation.
  

• Wild bees don’t make honey so they have no way of storing food. This means that they are never more than a few days away from starvation.
  

• Spring is when hunger gaps are most likely to occur. Dandelions are one of the most important food sources in Spring.

• The numbers of bees and other pollinators in Ireland are substantially declining – one third of our 98 wild bee species are threatened with extinction.

• But we need pollinators – out of the 100 crop species which provide 90% of food worldwide, 71 are bee-pollinated.

• Contrary to popular belief, it is our 98 species of wild bees who are responsible for most pollination here in Ireland, rather than our 1 species of honeybee.

• The All-Ireland Pollinator Plan says allowing dandelions to bloom in Spring is one of the key things we can do to help pollinator numbers.

  Information from the All-Ireland Pollinator Plan and pollinators.ie