How You Can Attract Honey Bees to Your Garden
Honey bees make up the greatest number of the world's pollinators, making them essential to the continuation of life as we know it today. The work they do pollinating plants promotes the growth of much of our food. On a smaller scale, they can do great things for your own garden too. But how do you attract them to your garden?
Plant the Right Flowers
Some flowers attract bees better than others. Honey bees prefer flowers with yellow, white, purple, blue, and violet petals, as they see these colors quite well. To appeal to a wider variety of bees, plant flowers of different sizes and shapes. Bees themselves don't come in only one size, so having multiple options can help you cater to a wider variety of bees. Groupings of the same flower close together may attract more bees to an area as well. Of course, flowers aren't the only plants that attract honey bees. Try planting other plants that attract bees to add some variety to your garden.
Adopt Organic Methods
Organic gardening focuses on promoting the natural balance and processes that occur as plants grow in order to encourage the growth of strong, healthy plants. This can involve processes such as nourishing the soil with compost, adding essential nutrients back into the soil, and using more environmentally-friendly pest control methods. Some insecticides pose a danger to honey bees that are beneficial to your backyard. Instead of liberally applying a pesticide to your whole garden, take the time to identify what pest you're dealing with. You can then target that specific pest in a way that won't harm honey bees.
Sunny, Yet Sheltered
Honey bees prefer warm, sunny, fairly calm weather conditions. They are excellent fliers, but if winds are too strong they likely won't leave their hive. The energy expenditure just isn't worth it. Warmer temperatures make gathering nectar from flowers easier as well. This means that to make your garden more attractive to bees it's a good idea to plant at least a portion of your garden in a place that is likely to get sun while being sheltered from windy conditions.
If you want to attract honey bees to your garden there are some things you can do to encourage them to visit. Choose your plants wisely, use organic methods, and plant at least some of them in sunny places that are sheltered from strong winds. These steps will put you on the right track to having a garden that bees love to frequent.
To start a garden of your own, try planting something in some of these containers!
