Bees need healthy, pesticide and herbicide free flowers. If you have a garden, bees are essential to pollinate the flowers that give rise to your crops. Your crops won’t be in bloom all summer, but bees need to eat all summer. Here are a few tips to ensuring bees have a variety of flowers to get all the nutrients they need so they can stay strong and healthy, and be ready to pollinate your garden and gardens for miles around. You can also follow me on Instagram (@TheWaspLady) for updates on which flowers in my “Yarden” (the whole yard is my garden!) are attracting pollinating insects.
Plant a Bee-Friendly Garden
Bees need pollen AND nectar to succeed in a year. They love options too. The bumble bee in the above picture is visiting an herb garden, filled with flowering oregano, marjoram, sage, and rosemary. So plant lots of different kinds and try to keep something blooming all year long.
Look for ‘bee-friendly’ or ‘pollinator-friendly’ signs at your local plant or seed store. If you don’t see any, just ask!
See below for links to find bee-friendly flower suggestions.
Invest in Herbs & Perennials
Herbs and perennials reliably produce nectar and pollen, they’re a good investment for a bee garden. My bees LOVE lavendar and herbs. I’m now playing around with native perennials – like this NZ native manuka flower (shown above). If you’re ok with the initial investment and you have the space to let them grow, perennials are ideal. Sometimes you can find seedlings for a few dollars. With a little TLC they can grow into a yearly reliable meal for your bees.
Plant Wildflowers
No time to mess with a garden? Sprinkle some wildflower seeds and wait for a surprising burst of colour to emerge where once there was lawn. You can find wildflower seed mixes specifically created to attract bees!
Leave the Flowering “Weeds”
“Weeds” are often the first sources of nectar and pollen for bees in early spring. Leave them until your garden blooms. Some ground nesting bees rely on weeds to help relocate their home. See the YouTube video I recorded after I had disturbed this solitary bee’s search image.
Plant Fruiting Trees
Fruit trees are what I consider a “triple win”: they are great for carbon sequestering, they produce flowers that feed the bees (and other pollinators!), and produce fruits that feed people!
I’ve had bees and flies all over my apple and pear blossoms. The older apple tree produces heaps of apples every year.
Plant Wildflowers
Another place I find diverse groups of pollinators is at the base of my fruit trees – where fallen fruit has begun to decompose. I’ve observed flocks of waxeyes (birds), flies, bees, wasps, and even butterflies.
Add vegetation for natural predators
I love looking through the grasses, rose branches, and shrubs to find natural predators (wasps, beetles, spiders, etc). These natural predators will capture a variety of pest species (caterpillars on veggies, aphids on roses, flies in your eyes, etc). Some are specialised to attack only one or two different species.
Encourage Bees to Nest in Your Yard
You can encourage solitary bees to nest in your garden. Ground-nesting bees, like the one in the above photo, are looking for undisturbed habitat to build their nests – so leave some of the garden debris and large rocks on the ground. Other solitary bees prefer to nest in hollowed out tubes. There are a variety of websites that post steps to make a do-it-yourself Bee or Insect Hotels like here and here.
Did you find a bumble bee colony in your yard? Don’t panic – bumble bees do not swarm, are not aggressive, and rarely sting. Bumble bee nests are temporary – lasting only until late autumn when new queens will fly off to hibernate on their own. You can encourage bumble bees to build nests in your yard. Bumble bee queens prefer to use abandoned rodent holes, but you can find tips to make your own bumble bee home here and here.
Keep an Eye Out for Solitary Bees
In New Zealand, honey bees and bumble bees are introduced (though still important) species. There are three genera of native bees, and all are solitary. Solitary bees are often smaller than honey bees, but if you see one in your garden, it means they might be nesting nearby. That’s because they don’t tend to forage too far from home. Solitary bees are at a high risk of dying out, so if you have one in your yard – good job! You have a bee-healthy garden!
Jandt Lab 