Bees - how to attract
How to attract bees to your garden
Although most sane people want to keep away from bees, some folks with gardens that need pollinating will actually do everything to attract bees. How do they do it? This is a good question. Here are some tips to keep in mind as you try to convince bees to stop by.
First off, and you can take this by way of a warning, taking steps to attract bees will not only attract bees! If successful, you will also attract butterflies, wasps (yikes!), and if you are lucky, hummingbirds.
Now, what do you do? Basically you need to plant a variety of flowers that will bloom ubiquitously. I have creeping flox that blooms in early spring, salvia which blooms in mid to late summer (and actually blooms throughout the season if I take good care of it), and petunias that will bloom for months on end. In my other flower garden, I have pansies, irises, and ranunculuses. No, that is not a typo. The reason I have these flowers combined thus is because they will basically take turns blooming, providing bees a constant source of pollen for their labors.
What is more, I surround my vegetable gardens with colorful marigolds. These tough flowers will bloom and grow all year long. These bright flowers attract the bees and the bees pollinate my garden and help me to have a huge harvest every year.
The thing to keep in mind when you want to attract and keep bees around your garden is that you want to have a few safe places for them to make a home. The eaves of a shed are good, as are the boughs of trees. Just remember that the bees are your friends and don’t bug them!
Now. Many folks might worry that it will be difficult to share your garden with bees. This is not so. It’s all a question of timing. So when you go to harvest, you need to make sure you don’t do it when you and the happy bees will clash. The neat thing is that bees like the temperature to be warm. So I actually harvest in the early morning when it is cool and the bees are still dozing. I have never had a problem with bees so far, so give these ideas a try!