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Nets for entomologists
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Food for Bees - grow the right flowers
to keep your garden humming with native bees |
It's not rocket science!
There are no particular secrets to providing food
for solitary bees. Many of the common garden species are happy to forage
from a wide range of plants. Some key points to follow are listed here.
Don't worry if you cannot follow all the points, as long as you have a
plentiful supply of blooms, the bees will come!
Digitalis lutea is a great plant for Wool Carder Bees |
Pointers to a successful bee garden
- Grow natural species, rather than plants that have been subject to
lots of horticultural breeding. Species flowers have far more accessible
nectar and pollen.
- Try to include some native flowers. This will increase your chances of
attracting solitary bees. However, non-native but natural species plants
are very good too.
- Grow lots of different species from different plant families like
daisies, foxgloves, toadflaxes and penstemons.
- Early flowering shrubs like willows, cherries, Prunus and redcurrant
are brilliant, as they provide lots of flowers.
- Make sure that you have a variety of plants that can provide season
long flowers from mid March to late August.
- Grow good sized patches of favoured plants. Three or four plants of a
suitable flower is a much better magnet to bees than just one plant.
- Sit back and enjoy the results!
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Purple Toadflax Linaria purpurea - another favourite of bees |
Recommended plants: The following will bring
the bees flooding in:
- Eryngiums - sea hollies and field eryngos.
- Daisy family - Anthemis, Achillea or just about
any of this family
- Borage family such as Forget-me-nots, Pulmonaria,
comfrey and green alkanet
- Dead nettle family such as woundworts, thyme,
marjoram
- Poppy family
- Basically, anything you can grow will probably do the
job!
Right, a woundwort, Stachys species - these are excellent bee
plants.
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