Why the hedgerow wakes first

By mid-March, most British gardens still look asleep. The hedgerow knows better. A native hedge catches the sun on its southern face, holds the warmth of the day and breaks the wind that would otherwise strip heat from anything flying. That combination of shelter, light and a succession of early flowers makes it the first proper feeding station of the year.

The flowers that matter now are modest ones: goat willow catkins, blackthorn, the first dandelions and red dead-nettle along the verge. None of them are showy. All of them are rich in the nectar and pollen that newly emerged bees need after a winter spent burning through their reserves.

Queen bumblebees on the wing

The first bees you are likely to see are queen bumblebees, freshly out of hibernation and flying low and purposefully along the base of the hedge. Each has overwintered alone and must now find enough fuel to build a nest and start a colony from scratch. A buff-tailed queen is big, round and dark-banded with a pale tail; an early bumblebee is smaller and neater, often with an orange-red tail tip; a tree bumblebee has a ginger thorax and a white tail and is frequently the first to find flowering currant.

Watch for the low, zigzag flight. If you come across a queen resting on cold ground in the early morning, leave her be — she often needs an hour of sun before she can fly again.

The solitary bees nobody notices

Most of our 270-odd bee species are solitary, each female building her own nest and stocking it with pollen. The earliest of them appear with the blossom. Hairy-footed flower bees — dark, furry, with pale-haired front legs — are devoted to lungwort, comfrey and dead-nettle, hovering at flowers like tiny hummingbirds. Red mason bees emerge as the fruit trees open, and tawny mining bees leave small volcano-like mounds in short turf and bare soil.

These bees travel short distances. A solitary bee may forage within 200 or 300 metres of her nest, which makes a good hedgerow or border a lifeline rather than a luxury.

How to read a hedgerow on a spring walk

Choose a still, bright day between about 11am and 3pm, when the temperature is above 10°C, and walk slowly with the sun behind you. Work along the sunny side of the hedge and check for the following.

• Willow — goat willow and pussy willow are the single best early source. A mature tree can hum with bees on a mild March afternoon.
• Blackthorn and hawthorn — blackthorn flowers before its leaves, hawthorn after. Both feed bees when little else is out.
• Flowering currant — a garden shrub that earns its keep, flowering from March and much loved by early bumblebees.
• The ground layer — red dead-nettle, ground ivy, dandelion and the first violets. Leave the mower off these patches for another month.

Planting a border that pays its way

If your border is bare in March, it is worth fixing. Aim for a run of flowers from February to May rather than a single flush.

• February to March: hellebores, crocus, winter aconite, single daffodils, mahonia.
• March to April: pulmonaria, flowering currant, rosemary, willow, flowering quince.
• April to May: comfrey, borage, honesty, chives, apple and pear blossom, wallflowers.

Plant in generous drifts, since bees find clumps far more efficiently than single specimens, and put the earliest flowers where the sun strikes first. A south-facing wall, a warm gravel edge or a raised bed all warm up quicker than open lawn.

Nesting, water and a small personal almanac

Nectar is only half the job. Solitary bees need bare, sunny ground to nest in, or hollow stems and old beetle holes in dead wood. Leave a patch of soil unmulched on a warm bank, keep a pile of logs in a quiet corner, and resist the urge to tidy every stem in spring — many will be used as nest sites or left as shelter.

Put out a shallow dish of water with a few pebbles in it, and be sparing with any sprays: even organic ones can harm bees if applied to open flowers. Hedgerows themselves are best cut in late winter on a rotation, so that some stretches always carry blossom the following spring.

Finally, write it down. Note the date you see your first queen bumblebee, your first hairy-footed flower bee, your first mason bee on the apple. After a few years you will have a small personal almanac — and a far sharper eye for what your own patch of countryside is doing.