Create a bee garden with flowers the bees will love and allow them to forage all year. Bees are great pollinators they will increase your fruit, vegetable and flower yields. Like us they need a balanced diet with proteins, sugars, enzymes, vitamins, minerals and something to drink. Nectar is important for the bees energy levels as they grow, breed, keep warm an most importantly fly to forage.They find all of these nutrients while foraging in our gardens and bushlands. As natural bushland habitats are cleared, more crops are planted, more pesticides used and less flowers in our house gardens become the new norm the bee numbers will continue to decrease – The bees need our help!
Honey bees, Native bees and Bumble bees all benefit from a bee garden. Bees are essential for pollinating, without bees our ecosystem could not exist. Why not encourage bees to your garden by mindful seasonal plantings of bee preferred plants.
All Bees collect both pollen, nectar and honey dew from flowers and plants, this is a food source for the entire colony. Honey bees will store this for the whole colony to enjoy. Honey Bees will travel 3-5 km to forage for their favorite pollen or nectar but not all bees are out of the hive foraging.
Each Honey bee has an assigned task for example
- collecting pollen,
- collecting nectar,
- nursing the young,
- scouting for foraging sites,
- cleaning the hive,
- security for opportunist wasps and other predators
Tips for a successful bee garden
- Plan a your garden to attracts bees all year round
- Choose varieties of plants that have different shaped flowers
- Avoid using insecticides, pesticides and herbicides
- Bees prefer single head flowers
- Provide habitat for bees or make a bee hotel for your native bees
