Attracting bees

[gnappi]

Last year and for several years before, I had no local bees in my yard.

I decided to plant bee friendly blooming plants around my house. I went to a few local home depot and Lowes stores and watched their perennial flower and herb sections for what attracted bees. I wound up buying several Mexican heather, lantana, Penta, Petchoa, and (on recommendation from here) basil which I hoped would bring them to my lot.

This year has been a very good year for bee activity here. Anyone else in So Fla. have ideas for perennial flowering plants that would attract bees?

[Fiddlewood]

Scorpion Tail - a native bush, attracts an assortment of pollinators. One of which is the Atala butterfly which I have seen on the blooms of my mango and avacado trees.

[geosulcata]

We have five hives in our yard, and while not a perennial, the bees love the sunflowers I plant by seed. They collect the pollen from the sunflowers. Lemon queen sunflowers do very well. They also like moss rose which we have planted as a ground cover. Having a consistent source of fresh water around helps as well. Planting flowers in clumps, by species, tends to attract more bees than spreading flowering plants throughout the yard. The sunflowers we grow are planted in our raised garden beds, very close together.

The fruiting plants our bees are most attracted to in our yard are the bananas, blueberries, avocados, passion fruit, lychees, and pumpkin flowers.

[CGameProgrammer]

I use African Blue Basil which is rapidly growing and literally blooms all year long so every day, from sunrise to sunset, bees are all over it. It keeps them healthy and nearby so they can pollinate my fruit trees when they bloom. It's really all you need.

[Tropheus76]

African basil is the bomb(yeah I said that). I have a few bushes planted around the property, two in my butterfly/persimmon/apple orchard and they attract massive amounts of bees and butterflies. Except for the light freeze we had that burned them back they bloom all year and smell nice and require zero work. They get to be a pretty big bush too. I would plant more but I am afraid they will take all the bees and pollenators.

Milkweed, firecracker bush, fireworks bushes(see them on the roadside a lot here in central FL), ummm dewdrop trees(not drought hardy but nice looking). These are mostly what I have around along with the commonplace pentas, heather, and lantanas.

Not a fan of lantanas, they spread too much and look like weeds.

[From the sea]

I have a huge cure for all in my back yard that attracts a lot of bees. I also keep the male flowers on my bananas for a while for the bees, they use resin from them for propolis and they have a lot of nectar. Plus wildflowers and weeds that grow randomly in my yard.

[LivingParadise]

I have a large number of honeybees in my yard. They are especially found of Manila palm flowers, and native weeds, which I am careful to keep around in certain sections of the yard.

Please note: Home Depot and Lowes use an insecticide on their plants that stays in the cells when they bloom , and is in the pollen. This insecticide actually KILLS honeybees over time. Please do not buy Home Depot or Lowes plants, and encourage them at the corporate level to change what methods they use. Sorry to say, if you want honeybees to live and work in your yard for you, you should rip out the plants you bought at Lowes and Home Depot and dispose of them. This is also true of most big box store plants, like Kmart, Walmart, etc. Find out what chemicals are used on the plants you're buying, or grow organic-certified plants and seeds only.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/101415329

http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/home-depot-and-lowes

http://www.salon.com/2014/06/26/bee_friendly_plants_sold_at_wal_mart_home_depot_actually_contain_bee_killing_pesticides/


If you are someone who uses chemicals on your yard, make sure to read the labels and look up the effects of what you are putting into the soil and plants, which also ends up in our water supply and oceans/rivers/lakes. Most of these chemicals not only kill honeybees, but also kill butterflies, dragonflies, ladybugs, and birds, and cause cancer in humans and pets. There are many organic alternatives to pesticides and fertilizers that do not kill people, or our planet.

[Zambezi]

Bees are usually attracted to large patches (more clustered the better) of shallow flowers, where there is a nice big center of yellow pollen in the middle. They seem to be attracted more to flowers that are more white, blue, purple or in the yellow tones. But once attracted to the area, they can pollinate any source they like. Your best bet is to use native plants and wildflowers, and also to set up your yard to be an ecologically inviting pollinator habitat.

Here's a good site by the USDA to read up on how to attract garden pollinators...
http://www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers/pollinators/gardening.shtml

Info on Bees
http://www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers/pollinators/animals/bees.shtml

A PDF on pollinators esp. for Eastern USA (Note pages 1-8 for good info on bees)
http://www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers/pollinators/documents/AttractingPollinatorsEasternUS_V1.pdf

For plants for your specific location....try Pollinator Partnership. Use your zip code to find out what your ecoregion you're in and each one has a PDF to tell you exactly what plants do best for your region. They only have info on  USA and Canada regions right now, but they have some great info for each region. They even have an app for it!!
http://www.pollinator.org/guides.htm

Here's a generic list of perennial plants that can work ...
clovers, larkspurs, daisies, milkweeds, passion vine, sage(salvia) plants
Lavandula spp. (Lavender),
Rosemarinus officinalis (Rosemary)
Salvia spp. (Sage)
Echinacea spp. (Coneflower)
Helianthus spp. (Sunflower)
Cercis spp. (Redbud)
Nepeta spp. (Catnip)
Penstemon spp. (Penstemon)
Stachys spp. (Lamb’s ears)
Verbena spp. (Verbena)
Phacelia spp. (Bells or Phacelia)
Aster spp. (Aster)
Rudbeckia spp. (Black-eyed Susan)
Origanum spp. (Oregano)
Achilliea millefolium (Yarrow)
etc.

[barath]

I'll add a third voice in favor of African Blue Basil -- best bee plant I have.  The bees (especially smaller bees), as well as ladybugs, seem to really like my Yerba Mate, which also seems to flower quite a bit.

[greenman62]

They love my basil and sunflowers.

I went to the 1$ store
seeds were 4 packs for $1

stuck some sunflower and basil seeds in the ground.
30 seconds... done !

My neighbors come by and take pictures, and stare etc...
i try to tell them about tropical fruit i am growing
guava, papaya, mango, black sapote etc...
 but, they could care less, and tell me i must be a master gardener
because the sunflowers are so beautiful... (LOL)

[FRUITBOXHERO]

I have a lakeview jasmine tree in my front yard, it blooms almost all year and I have thousands of bees swarming my tree all the time! Did not plant it for bees just for the beauty of the tree and the smell of the flowers.... The bees are a huge bouns!

[LivingParadise]

Thought people on this thread might enjoy checking out my morning honey bees. They are hanging a few feet off my balcony every morning, going to town on my Manila palms. I have about maybe 15 of these palms around the yard, so consider how many bees that is. Every single tree is in bloom and has at least 40 bees each that I counted on each segment of blooms, and the trees have two bloom segments each. The blooms last a long time, and new ones keep opening, so this is the scene for a few months.









It's a bit of a Where's Waldo challenge, but see how many bees you can spot in each picture! Each segment of blooms has close to 40, and the close-up photo has no fewer than 20 just in that small section!

[stuartdaly88]

Melissa officinalis!
Bee is even in the name and its a great herb in its own right.
Herbs with flowers bees seem to like, African basil is always a 'hive' of bee activity

[fruitnewbie]

My other half built me a top bare hive for Valentine's Day and a swarm moved in a week ago. I baited it with lemon grass oil and bees wax. Shocked that it worked!!! Thanks for the info, planting basil this weekend. They really love the Meyer Lemon. Lots of pollen! Also the passionfruit is a fav. We use only organic sprays safe for bees and spoiled chickens.

[nch]

Bees love my cilantro flowers.

[Tropheus76]

My only real question, is African basil too good. I see swarms of wasps, bees, and butterflies around them and they are big enough to be able to handle all of the insects at once. I see wacky colored wasps I didn't even know existed locally. But if the basil is attracting all those bugs, are they even bothering with anything else?

Anyone try basil honey out of curiosity? I wonder if it would be more bitter than orange blossom honey.

[Bush2Beach]

They love my basil and sunflowers.

I went to the 1$ store
seeds were 4 packs for $1

stuck some sunflower and basil seeds in the ground.
30 seconds... done !

My neighbors come by and take pictures, and stare etc...
i try to tell them about tropical fruit i am growing
guava, papaya, mango, black sapote etc...
 but, they could care less, and tell me i must be a master gardener
because the sunflowers are so beautiful... (LOL)

Hehehe par for the course. Pretty flowers gooood!
They might double take when you have some rare fruit to share with them.

[Bush2Beach]

I have a large number of honeybees in my yard. They are especially found of Manila palm flowers, and native weeds, which I am careful to keep around in certain sections of the yard.

Please note: Home Depot and Lowes use an insecticide on their plants that stays in the cells when they bloom , and is in the pollen. This insecticide actually KILLS honeybees over time. Please do not buy Home Depot or Lowes plants, and encourage them at the corporate level to change what methods they use. Sorry to say, if you want honeybees to live and work in your yard for you, you should rip out the plants you bought at Lowes and Home Depot and dispose of them. This is also true of most big box store plants, like Kmart, Walmart, etc. Find out what chemicals are used on the plants you're buying, or grow organic-certified plants and seeds only.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/101415329

http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/home-depot-and-lowes

http://www.salon.com/2014/06/26/bee_friendly_plants_sold_at_wal_mart_home_depot_actually_contain_bee_killing_pesticides/


If you are someone who uses chemicals on your yard, make sure to read the labels and look up the effects of what you are putting into the soil and plants, which also ends up in our water supply and oceans/rivers/lakes. Most of these chemicals not only kill honeybees, but also kill butterflies, dragonflies, ladybugs, and birds, and cause cancer in humans and pets. There are many organic alternatives to pesticides and fertilizers that do not kill people, or our planet.

Good Post! They sell invasive plants that should be illegal to plant as well such as scotch broom, witches broom.
I've been growing different perennial Salvia's for years like " pineapple sage" and these draw a lot of bee's year round. Also edible flowers , care free to grow here.
I agree about the African Basil! What a neat plant, I just found out about and yes it's as described.