Importance of Bees: How To Attract Bees To Garden

Bees are crucial to humanity. We all enjoy the fruits of nature and including ourselves, bees help make it possible for us to live on this planet. Despite their small size, bees are a very important part of our existence and they play a huge role in the cycle of life on our planet.

In this post I will discuss the importance of bees in gardening and how can you attract bees to your garden.

Why Bees Are Essential To Your Garden:

One of the important factors in doing gardening is to make the pollination process very easy. One of the easiest steps you can do to make this happen is to make your garden pollinator-friendly.

Bees can play a vital role in creating any successful garden but it is especially true if you are growing any veggies, fruits, or flowers.

Bees move from one flower to another flower in search of nectar and pollen. These two things are essential for the growth and survival of bees. source.

Now, this pollen is a medium for plants to reproduce. As the bees move from flower to flower they facilitate pollination. So if bees are not visiting your garden flowers the pollination process will be highly reduced and the fruit and seed formation will stop. 

Bees are not the only pollinator that helps plant pollination, there are others too but they are the predominant ones. Three fourth of the total foods we eat need pollinators such as the bees. For plants like nuts, fruits, vegetables bees are essential.

So if you want the success of your garden you have to make sure that bees constantly visit your garden.

Adapted to Pollinate:

Some bees are specially adapted to pollinate some particular plants. for example, bees with longer tongues like garden bumblebees are the best pollinators for plants with deep flowers like foxgloves that others cannot reach. 

Plants like comfrey have dropping flowers, so it needs a pollinator like the early bumblebee that is both tiny and agile so it can enter and exit the flowers easily.

Though they are immensely beneficial to the gardeners, their contribution in the flowering season goes unnoticed and ignored. We have all heard about the disappearance of honeybees but other species of bees are also declining throughout the world. 

It is for our own necessity that we build more and more bee-friendly gardens. Just by doing a bit, we can make a big difference.

Types of Bee:

There are more than 20,000 known species of bee worldwide and honeybees are just one of them. there are also 25 types of bumblebees and many more solitary bees.

Bumblebees also live in social colonies but they don’t build hives they live in nests with up to a few hundred fellow bees.

Solitary bees on the other hand build nest of their own. the nest can be in the ground(mining bees), walls, or dead woods (Mason bees).

You can find more about types of bees and their habitat in this post.

How To Help The Bees:

Bees are dying. They’re disappearing at an alarming rate, but you can help save them. Here are some simple things you can do in your garden to help the bees.

Build A Bee Garden ASAP:

It is usually a misconception that the bees flourish in national parks or other wild animals conserved areas. They love to stay in urban settings where the flights are usually short and they can get a variety of plants and flowers easily.

Start a bee garden today. It does not matter if you are gardening in your backyard, in containers or you have a wide area dedicated to it. You can always put plants that are bee-friendly and encourage the bees.

Bees are most likely to thrive in a patio garden or backyard than on a huge area devoted to a single crop.

Making your garden bee-friendly ensures a good supply of food for bees at crucial times like when the nest is growing and the queen is laying eggs.

When you are planning for planting flower plants to encourage the bees just remember a few points.

Choose Flowers Wisely:

While choosing flowers for the bees it is very important that you focus on getting flowers with yellow, white, blue, or purple colors. Having red flowers in the garden won’t serve you much as bees can’t see the color red. (source)

Flowers that have large petals are good for landing purposes. In some flowers, the petals form a long tunnel which can be sometimes very long and narrow for the bees to reach the nectar. 

Unlike hummingbirds, bees don’t have a long proboscis, So they prefer wide or flatter shaped flowers rather than tube-like shapes. 

Flowers that grow in clusters are preferred by the bees as they save a lot of energy for the bees to move around from flower to flower. 

Some flower petals are very tightly packed and also hinder the accessibility to nectar for bees. It is advisable to avoid such plants.

Trees and shrubs are good sources of pollen and nectar. Have them in your garden to keep an abundant food source for the bees throughout the seasons.

Finally, only choose plants that suit your garden space and location. Using companion planting techniques, and clubbing plants together, you can save quite a lot of space. 

As a rule of thumb, you should plant native plants that are rich in pollen and nectar to attract the bees.

Planting bee-friendly plants is a win-win situation. Not only will the bees benefit from the nectar and pollen, but the pollination of the plants will also occur faster and we will get the food as desired. 

The greater the number of such plants is better for your garden. The least number of planting you can do is to plant a plant for each season.

Plant Through The Season:

Bees need food and shelter all year round, so make sure you are planting through the season. Although this will vary on the types of plants and their cultivars generally,

For plants that will mature in springs and summers, you have to sow seeds in late winter.

if you are planting bulbs do it in the autumn so the plant can mature in springs.

A plant such as a sunflower can feed bees for the whole season. Being a forager bees move from one flower to another in search of pollen. And if your garden is missing blooms even for a season, they will go away and won’t come back very soon.

To stop this from happening, make sure you have at least three flowering plants in your garden throughout the year. This will keep your local bees happy.

Provide A Muddy Area or Shallow Trough For Water:

Bees need water, so if you have shallow puddles or a fountain, bees will come. Mason bees will use mud for building their nests. Adding a small fountain in your garden will give bees easy access to water.

Give Them Shelter:

Many bee species build their nest on the grounds, so cut your grass less often and give them an opportunity to build their nests. Raise the notches on the mower and lift blades a few centimeters higher.

You can also leave some woodpile in your garden so the bees can build their nest on them.

Use a Bee Hotel:

Not all bees live in hives, some live solitary. So, you can prepare bee hotels to give them a place to make their nest.

You can make bee hotels all by yourself or you can easily buy them from amazon.

Avoid Pesticides:

Please do not use any pesticides in your garden. Though these are not meant for killing bees and most of the time termed as “bug-killers”, they can definitely hurt them.

Use the concepts of organic gardening to grow and take care of plants. They not only will attract the bees but also benefit you and our environment.

Get Help:

Get inspiration from other bee gardeners. Look what others are doing, which plants are attracting more bees and which are not. You can ask other gardeners for help and guidance, most of the time they will be eager to help.

How to Remove Bees From The Garden:

Many people don’t like the sight of bees, the sight of even a single bee can elicit a terrified reaction. Due to this they often rush to eliminate the colony. But this is not only unnecessary and can hurt the bees, but it may also be harmful to you and your environment.

Ideally, you should embrace bees in your garden but if want to get rid of bees for any reason use a safe humane way to make sure the bees remained unharmed. there are many professional services that will remove beehives from your house in a proper manner.  

Conclusion:

In the end, we will always be able to make food, but it’s important to remember that bees and other pollinating insects are an integral part of our planet. It’s hard to imagine how life on Earth would operate without them.

So this is my plea to all bee-lovers, especially those with any connection to the agricultural environment: take some time to be aware of these hard-working and under-appreciated insects.

Set up a small bee habitat in your garden and make a bee house if you have time and space to grow some food plants for them.

You never know how much you might be doing for our plant and wildlife, the food chain, and even for the profits of the local farmer.

And you never know how many important things different bees do for all creatures on the planet, including us, until you look into it.

Is your garden is a heaven for bees? How do you offer a suitable environment for bees? Share your passion and also encourage fellow gardeners to encourage wildlife habitation in the garden.