Spring Planting

Spring Sweets for the Swarm

Spring time will be here before you know it and that means the bees will be out and about looking for some delicious pollen and nectar. Depending on where your bees are located, some plants may not be blooming until the summer or even late summer. To help your bees out as much as possible it is important to plant some "honey bee" loving plants!

Here are some plants everyone should plant around their bee hives to give them a little extra love this spring time:

Lavender

There can be no doubt that L. Angustifolia varieties, which bloom either continuously or multiple times, offer a greater opportunity for bees to have a regular ‘diet’ of lavender pollen and nectar. Lavender can also be cut and made into soaps or even used for cooking!

Rosemary

it's a good early producer, supplying high levels of both nectar and pollen. A hardy plant, it grows well in all areas, given sun and free-draining soil.

Rosemary is a great herb to have for cooking as well as grow for bees!

Sunflowers

The bright, large flower heads of sunflowers (Helianthus annuus and cultivars) present a nectar and pollen mother lode for their pollinators, which are bees of all kinds.

Sunflowers aren’t just for the bees... birds love their seeds too. You can also harvest the seeds once they turn a darker color and save them for years to come!

Allium

An Allium from my garden last year. The attraction for insects is that there are a large number of flowers all together in one flower head, meaning they don’t have to travel far to find the next sip of nectar. Allium is actually from a bulb. Bulbs can be purchased early spring or during the fall months.

Aster

Asters are a valuable late-season source of pollen for bees and nectar for bees and butterflies.

Verbena Bonariensis

One of my bees visiting my Verbena plants in my rose garden. It’s important for bees and butterflies too, providing a rich source of nectar for the honey bees.

Getting Started

Make sure to buy organic non-GMO certified seeds or plants. If you don’t have a green thumb, look at your local nursery or garden center weekly for new plants being put out that have already been grown and are already to be planted in the ground. Depending on the plant, garden centers put out new product every week so be sure to ask if they know when a certain plant is coming in.

If you do have a green thumb, buy some seeds! I use  http://www.johnnyseeds.com/ and order a ton of seeds every year to start indoors before spring time comes around. Make sure to look at the back of the seed packet for the instructions on when to start planting them depending on your last frost date.

Your bees will thank you!  🐝