Bee Gardens: Flowers, Fruits and Herbs for a Bee-Friendly Habitat

Image Gallery An estimated 70 percent of the food we eat is dependent upon pollination by insects such as bees. You can help support these vital, fascinating creatures by learning how to raise them yourself! Whether you want to keep bees for pleasure or profit, in the city or in a rural area, “Keeping Bees and Making Honey” can guide you every step of the way, from where to place your hive all the way up to how to best savor your first spot of “homegrown” honey. COVER: F&W MEDIA

The following is an excerpt from Keeping Bees and Making Honey by Alison Benjamin and Brian McCallum (F&W Media, 2008). This spectacular book offers an in-depth profile of nature’s most effective pollinator and covers all aspects of modern beekeeping, including where and when to get your bees, different types of hives, how to harvest and sell honey and beeswax, and even sensational recipes for Honey Cake, Mustard and Honey Salad Dressing, Spicy Chicken Wing Marinade, and more. This excerpt is from Chapter 7, “Gardening for Bees.” 

You may want to give your bees a helping hand when it comes to collecting pollen and nectar by planting bee-friendly flowers and shrubs in your garden or outside space. Even in a larger garden, you’ll unlikely have enough flowers to produce sufficient nectar to sustain a hive, so your bees will probably go farther afield — up to 3 miles — to find richer and denser sources of food. But the right flowers, fruit and vegetables in your garden will attract some of your own bees, as well as welcoming other visitors such as the bumblebee and solitary bee species. Above all, a garden or patch devoted to plants that are attractive to bees can be a source of great pleasure to any beekeeper, as much for the riot of color as for the activity of the bees.

Two other important factors contribute to a successful bee garden: The flowers should be in full sunlight and should be planted in groups. Flowers grown singularly or in twos and threes may fail to attract bees. A decent-sized clump of a suitable plant, such as lavender, is much more valuable. Likewise, bees often overlook flowers grown in shade even though they may produce nectar and pollen.

Don’t place the plants too close to the hive thinking you are helping the bees by reducing the distance they have to travel to find food. Flowers very near a hive are in the firing line when the bees go on their toilet trips, so they sensibly avoid them as a food source.

Unfortunately, some of the most spectacular-looking garden flowers are of no use whatsoever to the honeybee. Double-headed roses, chrysanthemums and dahlias, for example, provide no nectar and hardly any pollen. In contrast, many flowers that are often discounted as weeds, such as dandelions and forget-me-nots, provide a rich source of food. That is why one of the best and easiest things you can do to make your garden more bee-friendly is to throw away the weedkillers that maintain those immaculate-looking lawns and instead let your lawn and flower beds go wild.