Bees you find at night don’t need rescuing with syrup or sugar water. If one is on a path or a doorstep (risk of being stepped on), move it somewhere sheltered and leave it until morning.
Slide a leaf or a piece of card underneath, and move it to a sheltered spot off the ground. Under a hedge, into a plant pot, onto a flower head, out of the wind and rain.
In short, a bee on a path or driveway at night is at risk. A bee resting on a flower or clinging to a stem is not. If you are not sure which you are looking at, our guide on how to tell if a bee is dying or tired will help.
Bees don’t fly in the dark, so feeding one is essentially charging it up with nowhere to go. Never bring a bee into a warm house. Heat makes bees active, and it can burn through their energy stores, leaving them exhausted when the sun eventually rises.
How to save a bee at night
Four steps, and none of them involve sugar.
- Check where it actually is. On a path, a driveway, a doorstep, a patio table or anywhere it could be stepped on, it needs moving. On a flower, a stem, a fence post or a wall, it doesn’t. Leave that one alone.
- Slide something underneath it. A leaf, a piece of card, an envelope, a receipt from your pocket. Let the bee walk on by itself rather than picking it up. If it grips and won’t move, tilt the card gently against its front legs and give it a few seconds.
- Move it a short distance, not a long one. A metre or two is plenty. You want somewhere off the ground and out of the wind and rain: under a hedge, into a plant pot, onto a flower head, under a garden bench, tucked into ivy against a wall.
- Leave it there. Don’t keep checking on it, and don’t move it a second time. When the sun rises, it will warm itself up and fly off in its own time.
Use as little torchlight as you can while you do it, and angle the beam away from the bee rather than straight at it.
What if the bee is indoors?
Turn the light off and open a window. Nine times out of ten that is enough, and the bee leaves on its own once it isn’t being drawn to the bulb.
If it stays put, put it in a ventilated box with a piece of kitchen roll in the bottom and keep the box somewhere cool and dark. A shed, a porch or an unheated hallway is ideal. Let it go at first light, somewhere near flowers if you have them.
What you shouldn’t do is post it back out into the cold and the dark, or leave it loose in a warm room all night. Both leave the bee worse off than when you found it.
What not to do
Most people land on this page about to do one of these, usually with the best intentions.
- Don’t bring it into a warm house. Heat wakes the bee up and it burns through energy it can’t replace until morning.
- Don’t feed it sugar water in the dark. A fed bee still can’t fly anywhere at midnight, and the syrup is far more use to it after sunrise.
- Don’t put it in the fridge. It’s a common piece of internet advice and it’s a good way to kill a bee.
- Don’t spray it with water or try to wash it. Wet wings are the thing you are trying to avoid, not create.
- Don’t shine a torch straight at it, and don’t take flash photographs of it.
- Don’t take it home with you. Move it a metre, not a mile.
- Don’t put it back down on the same path or doorstep once you’ve picked it up.
A bee out after dark is usually exactly where it wants to be
Bumblebees and solitary bees deliberately spend the night outside. Bumblebee workers can sleep on flowers, and male solitary bees roost on stems and seedheads.
So a bee sitting still on a flower is nothing to worry about and is probably just having a snooze. When it comes to the wee hours, shelter beats sugar every time.