When owning a garden, it will naturally become host to a range of creatures and critters, including bees, which are essential to our way of living, such as helping to fertilize plants and, of course, making honey. In this article, you will find useful advice on how to keep your garden bee-friendly, and other tips on how to avoid harm coming to bees.
What will attract bees
Bees can be quite picky when it comes to pollinating flowers, so therefore you should avoid any plants that have double heads or are multi-petalled, due to the lack of nectar bees will be able to extract from them. Instead, you should look to purchasing plants and placing them in your garden such as:
- Honeysuckle
- Knapweed
- Clovers
- Bluebells
- Foxgloves
- Lime tree
- Norway maple tree
- Wood anemone
- Black locust tree
As a rule of thumb, plants such as foxgloves can be poisonous to animals such as dogs, so precautions should be put in place in case you have household animals. But if you still want to maintain a friendly garden for your bees, whilst protecting yourself and your pets, here is a helpful guide and what plants to look out for.
As well as this, installing a bee house can be an effective space for bees to pollinate, and will not take up too much space. These can be purchased online, or you can create one yourself. Once it is set up, you should have it facing south to avoid the wind, and will keep bees cozy if the weather gets windy or rainy.
When are bees most likely to visit?
Like most insects, bees love warm weather, as it is prime time for them to pollinate flowers and make delicious honey. They traditionally appear between the start of spring (May) and midday through summer (July) although there may be the odd scattered drone before or after this period. However, if you have a large collection of plants in your garden, you should be wary of swarms of bees that may mingle around particular plants, and if in a dangerous situation you should contact a local beekeeper for advice.
However, this does not mean you won’t see bees appear in other seasons, either. Certain adult species of bees may protect themselves through the cold in winter. This process is called overwintering. Once spring comes, the mason bee, for example (which has spent the winter as pupae) will naturally begin its life cycle, and in autumn lay its next eggs before dying out at the end of the season.
Looking after your garden
You want to make sure bees will feel comfortable around your garden. Weeds, for example, are a nuisance for gardeners, but you should refrain from removing them as they produce enough nectar for bees to feast on. However, to prevent your garden from being overpopulated, you can leave a small batch that can get mowed less regularly in order to keep bees interested in your garden.
Furthermore, bees require fresh, fertilized plants for them to pollinate, so it is worth keeping your flowers in enough range of sunlight for as long as possible, as well as watering them regularly, but not to the point of oversaturation. Also be cautious about pesticides, as these are extremely harmful to bees, so you may need to find alternative methods such as:
- Picking pest-resistant plants
- Regulate crop rotation
- Enforce physical barriers like slugs or snails (gates, traps)
- Keep soil well-drained and fertile
Summary
As bees are an endangered species, it is important that you can keep your garden bee-friendly, and hopefully, following this advice, it will help keep them comfortable and wanting to come back for more with their friends when the weather heats up. There is only so much you can do, though, as this is a cost-effective exercise to undertake, especially when you want to refrain from spraying pesticides to irradicate slugs and wasps, for example.
However, so long as you continuously maintain your garden and ensure your flowers are well fertilized and do not go mad with removing all your weeds, you should get the occasional visits from bees that will particularly want pollen from your plants to take back to their hive and generate honey.
