When Spring has sprung, and the garden is a riot of color, the birds' sing, and the bees buzz. But did you know that one in the three bites of food you eat comes from bee pollinated plants? These little bees are important for our food supply. However, reduced pollen and nectar plants, increasing reliance on systematic insecticides, and global warming are harming our bees. 

Whether you are venturing into the world of keeping honeybees, or simply want to attract native and solitary bees to your yard, having a bee friendly garden is essential.  Even if you live in an urban area, you can do your part with container and community gardens. To help bees, having additional pollen and nectar supplies is the most important in late winter and early spring. 

This article aims to provide an introduction to why bee gardens are important, and how to get started.

Related: Pollinator Garden Book Recommendations

Why Do We Need Bee Gardens?

We need bees. They pollinate almost all of our crops, except for cereals. Bees of all kinds are declining at such an alarming rate that the world's scientists are now contemplating this disaster that would occur if there were not enough bees to fulfill this vital function. Bees use pollen to feed their young.

Bee gardens can play a significant role in helping to maintain peak populations. All they need is plenty of flowers throughout the year and as many different shapes and sizes as possible.

Why Are Bees Important?

We have a more detailed article about the importance of bees you can read for more information.  But for now, here some highlights of why bees are important.

The bees we keep in hives and those that live in the wild are critical for pollinating plants that produce food that we eat. Numerous creatures rely on bees for the existence, as to many flowers and plants for pollination.

Bees have an excellent sense of smell, and in 2008, scientists developed a detector, essentially a box of bees trained to stick out their tongue if they caught a whiff of something dodgy like explosives. An infrared sensor registers the movement in the bees' tongues and alerts security staff to the presence of danger.

Numerous bee species have extremely precise habitat requirements, and if that habitat changes, their populations will respond quickly. This makes bees potentially good indicators of environmental disturbance, including climate change.

These type of services to which bees contribute that go beyond just pollinating our food plants. Remember, the wild plants pollinated by bees, or some of them will go big and strong and soak up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This process is called carbon sequestration.

Advantages of Bee Gardens

It goes without saying, the world will be a less colorful and interesting place without bees.  When you create a bee-friendly garden, you are truly taking a step to help the environment.

Provide a habitat for the bees.

We are losing bees at an alarming rate, and we really can't live without them. Without pollinator bees, we would be left eating just the staple grains.

It won't cost you much.

Native plants are what the bees love, and natives don't need a lot of water, pesticides, and fertilizer. The birds and the bees prefer what nature recommends. If you plant a perennial bee garden, it will continue to grow year after year.  For a simple start, you can get an expensive pack of wildflower seeds.

Add beauty and color to your world.

You will have the best-looking garden in the block because it will be teeming with a life full of colors, bloom, and nectar. It is going to be awesome.

Factors to Consider When Planting a Bee Garden

When deciding what kind of plants and flower you want to grow, it is a good idea to take a step back and think about your goals.

• Do you want a planting tailored to support the specific bees that pollinate your plants to improve pollination?
• Or do you want to conserve the diversity of wild bees on your farm or in your yard?
• Are you looking to support honey bee colonies and honey production after the plants bloom?
• Perhaps you are interested in some of the other benefits of habitat planting, like providing shelter for other beneficial insects and songbirds, reducing runoff and soil erosion, or improving water quality.
• Or maybe you simply want something that looks pretty.

You need to keep your goals in mind as you decide what kind of practice you want to implement in your garden and what plants you want to use.

How to Encourage Pollinating Bees into Your Garden | GrowVeg

Help Save Bees by Planting Flowers

Adding bee-friendly plants and flowers does not have to be a major endeavor.  Depending upon where you live, there may already be wild flowers or flowering trees and shrubs growing naturally, or in your neighbors' yards. There are many little things you can do to support the bees in your area, even if you are not ready to go all in on creating a full bee garden or keeping bees.

Bees' favorite plants can come in many different forms depending on where you are located, the space you have available, and the level of investment you are willing to commit. Some things simple things you can do include: 

• You could plant annual or perennial flowers on your field borders or unproductive field corners as intercropped insectary strips or understory plantings.
• Another option is to plant a hedgerow with flowering trees and shrubs, as well as wildflowers. You could incorporate attractive bee plants into filter strips that limit runoff of sediment and excess nutrients from the garden.
• You can choose flowering plants that provide nectar and pollen for bees and allow them to bloom.

Each of these strategies presents different opportunities and limitations and requires a different investment level in terms of cost and maintenance.

Related: Best Beekeeping Book Recommendations

How To Plant A Bee Garden

Bees are essential to our environment, and they are uniquely connected to our food. Bees, flies, butterflies, birds, and even beetles are all great pollinators. Pollinators are seeking pollen and nectar, and in doing that, they are the reason for pollinating more than 85% of the world's flowers and crops.

Of these many pollinators, bees are responsible for the majority of seeds and fruits that humans, songbirds, and mammals consume. But they are dying at an alarming rate due to the loss of flowers for food and habitats.

What can we do, especially living in urban and suburban environments to help save the bees? It turns out we can do a lot. Thinking of the bees when you plan your garden is probably the most important thing you can do, and helping the bees is very easy.

Let's understand what the bees need from us. Bees need four things from their environment.

• They need water.
• They need pollen from flowers and trees.
• They need nectar from flowers.
• They also need a sticky resin called propolis which comes mostly from trees.

Bees travel up to three miles to look for these things. Hence chances are bee flies further for its food than you do when you go to the supermarket. This means your garden will help bees within a six-mile radius of your yard.

Tips for Creating A Bee-Friendly Garden

When it comes to the actual planting of your bee garden, other than choosing which flowers or plants you are going to grow, the steps are the same as planting any other garden.  

• Print out or draw a diagram of your garden area and figure out how many plants you need. You will also need to determine whether you are planting from seeds, bulbs or seedlings. 
• Finding a sunny location is an important component of a bee garden because most flowering plants love the full sun.
• When we have clay soil in the area, the first step is to incorporate some good organic compost. It helps to retain water. It helps to create good soil structure and feed soil biology.
• If the beds are narrow, take advantage of the vertical space. Old screen protectors can be utilized to make an excellent trellis.

Best Flowers for a Bee Garden

You are interested in supporting bees in your garden but not sure where to start? One thing you can do is make sure that you have flowering habitat available for bees in your garden — especially when the flower is not in bloom.

When we say habitat for bees, we mean an area with the resources or conditions that allow bees to survive and reproduce.

• Flowering plants provide food resources or nectar and pollen for both managed and wild bees. They also provide nesting areas for some bee species.
• If you live near or on a farm that uses pesticides, having a separate flower garden can provide a refuge that protects bees from these chemicals.

Fields of wild flowers are often thought of as perfect habitats for bees, but there is a wide variety of flowers, plants, trees, and shrubs available to grow in a more formal bee garden.  Some great examples include Maples, Gorse, Aster, Bluebell, Crocus, Hazel, Cotoneaster, Raspberry, Black Tupelo, Bee Balm, Rosemary, Campanula, Teasel, Black-Eyed Susan, Sunflowers, Delphinium, and Lavender, just to name a few.

If you plan on keeping honeybees, or you have a commercial beekeeper nearby, do your research. The flowers that the bees pollinate will impact the flavor of the honey.

Recommended Reading: 100 Plants to Feed the Bees: Provide a Healthy Habitat to Help Pollinators Thrive

Attracting Bees to Your Vegetable Garden

When we talk about bee gardens, we also need to discuss how bees can be beneficial to your kitchen garden. It just needs some planning. Except for honey bees, bees mostly prefer to hibernate in winters. Autumn and spring are their favorite season. 

In addition to planting flowers in your vegetable garden for the bees, they can also help to pollinate many of the vegetables themselves. However, that applies only if you are growing certain things. For example,

• Bees don't pollinate vegetables such as broccoli, kale, lettuces and cabbage because you are harvesting them before they go to flower. But to help bees through the winter, you could leave some to go to flower in the fall (plus you can collect seeds afterwards).
• While some bees can "technically" pollinate tomatoes, honey bees won't pollinate them.  This is because of the way tomatoes need to be pollinated. In most cases tomatoes are wind pollinated, however studies show that tomatoes that are bee-pollinated tend to bigger and higher in vitamin C.  Borage is a great companion plant for tomatoes because it not only attracts bees and other pollinators, it also helps to repel tomato hornworms and improve the taste of the fruit.
• When it comes to cucumber , bees love them—anything in the squash family, i.e., zucchini, pumpkins, watermelons, etc. They are drawn to the large, closed flowers. They are also good for helping pollinate beans and peas.
• Bees don't pollinate corn, it is wind-pollinated. That is why they have tassels.
• Bees enjoy beet flowers, but they are harvested before the bees get there. Similarly, celery is harvested before then as well.
• Bees love when basil goes to flower. However, if you are harvesting it, you won't want it to go to flower. So, you may want to have a plant or two just for the bees and just let it grow. In addition to planting basil in your herb garden, grow it near other vegetables to help with pollination for those plants.
• Some bees will love potatoes, but it is not their first choice, and the reason is the pollen that the potato flower gives off is not very high in protein. It is high in carbohydrates. For bees to collect pollen, they need pollen that is high in protein and carbohydrates.

Ultimately bees by nature are not drawn to most vegetable flowers, however you can bring more bees to your food gardens by planting things they do like. Basil, borage and nasturtiums are great options that can be grown with just about any vegetables.

How to Attract Bees To Your Garden | CaliKim29 Garden & Home DIY author of Organic Gardening for Everyone

Tips for a Successful Bee Garden

Bees desire large splotches of color with the same sort of flower. Bees have flower fidelity. If they start gathering pollen from snapdragon, they will continue to work the snapdragons until they are all done. Bees are more attracted to large patches of the same plant than they are to a single plant.

Bees also like linear features in the landscape, or Bhatia's borders are a good way to attract bees.

Plant your plants at different levels. This also helps to attract the bees. These borders give a good tiered view to attract them. It is common for beekeepers to have either rooftop beehives in urban and suburban areas or to have seven-foot fences near hives. Both encourage bees to fly above the height of humans, thus keeping humans safe from the bees.

Here are some more tips for a successful bee garden:

• Taller flowers or flower displays that gave several levels tend to be more noticeable to bees than flowers just at ground level.
• Bees and other pollinators like butterflies love wide, open, and sunny spaces. Humans often like trees to provide a shady spot. Think about locating trees along the perimeter or around the north sides of buildings that are already partly shading.
• Reduce the ornamental grasses and replace them with long-blooming flowers. People plant ornamental grasses because they retain the same color and shape over long stretches of the growing seasons. It is possible to replace these with flowering plants of the same duration.
• Think about the seasons. Bees need pollen and nectar from early spring to late fall. You probably also want a garden that looks vibrant throughout the whole season. Plan your garden to bloom early as well as late.
• Early spring is significant to bees because it is the time that they are starting to rear a new brood. That means baby bees for the spring and summer. Autumn is important because bees store up their last roof reserves in the fall before wintering over. If a colony does not have enough food reserves, it cannot survive the winter. When the food runs low in s colony, the bees share their food so equally that all 30,000 bees in the colony will die within 24 hours of each other when they starve.
• Add a water feature. Even s birdbath will give the bees all the water they need. Try to avoid using mulch. Mulch block access to the soil for ground-dwelling bees. Allowing the bees space under low-lying ground cover is ideal so avoid using mulch in these areas.
• Don't be afraid to let wild flowers and so-called weeds flourish. Dandelions, coneflower, cornflower, daisies, honeysuckle, clover, and many other wild flowers we think of as weeds all provide valuable sustenance to the bees. Often, the products used to kill these can also hurt other flowers, trees, and even grass that you want to grow in your garden.
• Think about what you are spraying. However, the insecticides you are spraying might attack Japanese beetles or gypsy mobs, or other garden pests. These chemicals affect other insects such as bees and butterflies.

Recommended Reading: The Bee-Friendly Garden: Design an Abundant, Flower-Filled Yard that Nurtures Bees and Supports Biodiversity

No Flowers = A World Without Bees

It is easy to take bees for granted. One way to appreciate them is by imagining what would happen if the world is without bees. Build a garden that you will enjoy and take care of.

Bees are an interesting kind of insect. There are almost 20 thousand species of bees all around the world (with about 4000 in the United States). They all almost do the same essential thing for us and the environment. Among the top 100 crops that make up to 90% of people's diet throughout the world, bees are responsible for pollinating 70 of them.

Bees directly pollinate forty percent of the food that we eat. Without bees, there would be no apples, no pears, no almonds, no orange juice, no tomatoes, no cucumbers, no squash, no pumpkins... And many more fruits, vegetables, and tree nuts would also disappear.

Don't be afraid of the bees — they need our help, and we need them.