Bee

Bee collecting pollen from elder flowers

Help honey bees survive the winter

Honeybees are far and away the most important pollinator in today's agricultural landscape.^[1]

How can we help bees to survive the winter:

Plant late bloomers - The article mentions asters and goldenrod. In my garden i also sow phacelia and borage in late summer. They can blossom until late September. I also sow rapeseed and mustard, which can blossom still much later.
Avoid systemic pesticides.
Encourage early spring blooms - For example flowering trees like maples and willows. I let my Brussels sprouts and kale stand until they blossom and these plants produce many flowers early in spring.

A swarm with bees
A new hive for a swarm of bees. The bees are fed through a jar with honey. For three days the swarm had to get used to their new home. Then they began flying out again and in one day they built two of these beautiful new combs, fixed to two of the laths. On the photo you see one of the combs.
This type of bee hive is simply a box with laths of 5 cm as cover. The bees build their honeycombs hanging to the laths.
On top a bottle with honey to feed the bees during a few days after they got their new home.
Bees making a new honeycomb. The wax is still colored white. Later the bees will bring pollen with in it carotene and this will give the wax its yellow color.

↑ Help honey bees survive this winter Huffington Post - by Heather Mattila, assistant professor of natural sciences at Wellesley College

Bee Wikipedia
Beehive Wikipedia
Bees Solve Complex Problems Faster Than Supercomputers The Daily Galaxy
Pollination "Pollination is the process by which pollen is transferred in plants, thereby enabling fertilisation and sexual reproduction." - Wikipedia
The problem of pollination decline Research Topics

Ecoversity TV - Beekeeping In case you want to start keeping bees, this is a helpful series of videos. Practical and also with information that may be new to the experienced beekeeper. Shown is also a type of very simple box, top-bars hive, that you can easily make yourself and can be used as a beehive. Each video can be seen full screen by clicking on the link at the bottom of the video. That leads you to the video on YouTube. One of the videos in this series: