Add A Mix Of Bee-Friendly Flowers To Your Garden To Create A Buzz This Summer

Flowers and bees are a perfect match. Bees gather nectar and pollen enabling plants to reproduce. In turn, pollen feeds baby bees and nectar is turned into honey to be enjoyed by the bees and you, the beekeeper. Everyone's happy.
　　
While many kinds of trees and shrubs are bees' prime source of pollen and nectar, a wide range of flowers contributes to bee development and a bumper crop of honey. You can help in this process by adding some of these flowers to your garden or by not removing some that already are there. Did you know that many weeds actually are great bee plants, including the pesky dandelion, clover, goldenrod, and purple vetch? You can grow all kinds of flowering plants in your garden that not only will add beauty and fragrance to your yard but also give bees handy sources of pollen and nectar. You'll hear the warm buzz of bees enjoying them before you even realize the plants are in bloom.
　　
Each source of nectar has its own flavor. A combination of nectars produces great tasting honey. Not all varieties of the flowers described in the sections that follow produce the same quality or quantity of pollen and nectar, but the ones that listed here work well and bees simply love them.
　　
To the human eye, a garden in bloom is a riot of colour. Flowers jostle for our attention, utilising just about every colour of the rainbow. Sunflowers are made up of two families. They provide the bees with pollen and nectar. Each family is readily grown from seed, and you may find some nurseries that carry them as potted plants. When you start sunflowers early in the season, make sure that you use peat pots. They are rapid growers that transplant better when you leave their roots undisturbed by planting the entire pot. Helianthus annuusinclude the well-known giant sunflower as well as many varieties of dwarf and multibranched types. Sunflowers no longer are only yellow. They come in a wide assortment of colors, from white to rust and even several varieties of mixed shades.
　　
But of course, it is not our attention they need to attract, but that of insects, the perfect pollinating agents.
　　
And as these remarkable pictures show, there is more to many flowers than meets the eye - the human eye at least. Many species, including bees, can see a broader spectrum of light than we can, opening up a whole new world.
　　
The images, taken by Norwegian scientist-cameraman Bjorn Roslett, present a series of flowers in both natural and ultraviolet light, revealing an insect's eye view.
　　
We gardeners, often unwittingly, do a fair bit to help bees. But if we all do a touch more, our collective impact may well tip the balance. There are key ways we can tempt them in and up their numbers.
　　
The commonly held belief that bees enjoy plants from the blues, yellows and white spectrum is correct. Bees cannot see red: a poppy looks black to them.
　　
Bees find double flowers difficult to work, they simply cannot get to the nectaries because of the mass of petals.
　　
So choose plants as close to the natural species as possible and add early flowering plants, so when weary bees venture out into cold, winter sunshine in February they can gain sustenance. Snowdrops, crocus, Daphnes are all valuable to bees.
　　
In my garden I have sheets of Symphtum 'Hidcote Blue' under my orchard trees which comes into flower in early spring.
　　
When Holly waters her greenhouse on sunny days she notices masses of bees buzzing around on the ground - not after plants but the moisture.
　　
If you have a pool, try and make it shallow in places perhaps with logs and pebbles so they can access the water. Bees also need nooks and crannies to hide in.
　　
So leave piles of logs, have climbing plants on trellises to create sheltered hibernation spaces and don't tidy everything up obsessively but leave a few wilder bits.
　　
If you mow your lawn a smidgeon higher this will help encourage the wild thymes, self heal and clover and you will make hundreds and thousands of bees very happy.
　　
Bees like and do some surprising things. They will ignore laurel hedges in full flower but be all over them like a rash when just in leaf. The young leaves have glands or nectaries on the underside which the bees swoon over.
　　
RHS beekeeper Andrew Halstead says that one type of solitary bee shaves the hairs of the Lambs Ear plant (Stachys byzantinus) with their jaws to line the tunnels of their egg production areas.
　　
So add a mix of bee-friendly flowers to your garden, allotment, patio or hanging baskets - and help us create a buzz this summer.