Bee Welcome!

Gorgeous flowers are popping up all over as the weather warms up and have bees to thank for all the wild ones. Bees are one of the most important pollinators we have. In fact, organic farms often plant tons of flowers and bee-friendly plants to help their crops grow. A visit to the University of California at Davis taught me a great deal about which plants worked best to attract pollinators and even increase crop yield by up to triple what you could expect without them.

In order to keep bees around for good, we need to provide pollinator habitats in our own gardens. So long as they have somewhere to gather food for themselves, they’ll continue to work hard and make our planet beautiful. Two ways to help bees out are to either create Bee House or provide bee food.

To make a Bee House for some of our local mason bees, check out these instructions online. It may take an entire season to attract bees to their new home, so don’t be discouraged. Make sure to place your bee house near your bee food garden. Build A Bee Box

The plants found in a bee food garden vary wildly, but one of my personal favourites to plant is sunflowers. They grow huge and are always a beautiful sight from the kitchen window, plus you get fresh grown sunflower seeds at the end of the summer. Daisies, marigolds, buttercups, monkshood, columbine, lavender, sage, and mint are all wonderful for attracting bees and the sage and mint perform double duty in your kitchen.

Colour plays a large part in attracting bees due to the way their eyesight works. Have you ever noticed a bee hovering near you and it just won’t leave? You were probably wearing a colour that was exactly like that bee’s favourite flower and it was wondering why you didn’t have any food for it! For the best results in attracting bees, plant flowers that are blue, violet, white or yellow.

Last, and most importantly, bees need fresh water. How many times have you seen a poor bee struggling to swim in an outdoor pool or other water source? Often these bees drown while just trying to get a drink of water! Don’t worry; there is an easy way to help them out.

Find a shallow dish or planter and fill it with different types of pebbles and rocks. You can find them at any garden store or even start collecting them yourself when you’re digging up the garden for planting. Arrange them so there are higher areas and lower areas in the dish and then fill it about an inch or two deep with fresh water from the hose.

Always leave a little bit of the rocks or pebbles sticking out of the water. This allows the bees to land and drink without getting their wings wet, which would keep them from being able to fly. As water evaporates, having different levels of rocks will allow you to go longer between needing to re-fill the water level.

Enjoy your new bee-friendly garden!