Hairy footed flower bee dead

[womble]

Just found one of these bees (had to look it up) it was laying on its back, so I turned it over and it buzzed off slap bang into a rosemary bush, then lay on its back again, I turned it over and left it weakly moving, but sheltered from the wind.

Went back and had a look 10 mins later and it's crawling with red ants I think they probably stung it, in the meantime I had looked up what to with it, which was stick it on a dandelion apparently as they can be weak from lack of food, but I think it's too late now and it's looking almost dead.

Just a bit annoyed I didn't move a bit quicker to help it. Just thought I'd share this so you know what to do in the same situation.

[SarzWix]

I rescued a bee that looked really weak last year, put it on a sturdy leaf and then made up some thickish sugar & water solution in the shed and dribbled a bit onto the leaf next to it. It managed to suck up quite a bit of it, I had to keep re-dribbling. It sat there for a while, then took off happy as larry. I don't know what sort of bee it was, or whether that would work for all of them but it seemed like a good idea at the time.

[eye1der]

its all about temperature with bees, below 16 degrees they cannot fly properly as their muscles sieze up, spring time bummble bees found 'dieing' are in a lot of cases just cold, just pick them up and take them indoors untill they warm up(dont worry about them stinging, they will not untill its really the last thing they can do to you if your crushing them. trust me lol!)

[womble]

I didn't know about the 16 degrees, thanks for that!

[IgglePiggle]

Maybe we should all get in some little blankets for them

[Topcat36]

Very interesting ,maybe little bee houses , will remember the sugar trick tho,often see bees looking sickly never know what to do with them.

[Rabidbun]

Sugar trick worked for me the other day, thanks Sarzwix! There was a bee on my washing, just crawling about and trying to hide - after it was moved to the decking railing and found the sugar water pools it spent around five minutes sucking up the mix and was gone a short while later.