How to attract bees

Here are a few simple tips to help attract bees to your garden. Remember beautiful flowers and a good crop of fruit and veg all depends on pollination, and for that we need you know who.

What bees like

• Plants with lots of small flowers like lavender

• Open, single flowers such as asters or daisies

• Bell shaped flowers such as foxgloves

• Lots of variety

• Plants native to Britain

• Wildflowers and 'weeds' like dandelions

• Fruit trees

What bees don't like

• Exotic or highly cultivated flowers that are not indigenous to the UK

• Double or elaborate flowers as they often contain little or no nectar

• And most annual bedding plants for the same reason

Be bee friendly all year round

• A bee's lifecycle runs from March to September and so it's important that there's a constant source of nectar available during this period.

• We'd recommend aiming to have at least two nectar rich plants in flower at any one time.

Bees love these flowers

Spring Flowers	Early Summer Flowers	Late Summer Flowers
Apple Bluebell Broom Bugle Cherry Crab apple Daffodil Flowering Currant Forget-me-not Hawthorn Hellebore Pear Plum Pulmonaria Pussy Willow Red dead-nettle Rosemary Thrift Viburnum White dead-nettle	Allium Aquilegia Astilbe Birds-foot Trefoil Bush Vetch Campanula Ceanothus Chives Comfrey Cotoneaster Escallionia Everlasting Sweet Pea Everlasting Wallflower Fennel Foxglove Geranium Honeysuckle Kidney Vetch Laburum Lupin	Angelica Aster Borage Bramble Buddleia Catmint Cornflower Dahlia (single-flowered) Delphinium Fuchsia Heather Hollyhocks Ivy Knapweed Lavender Marjoram Penstemon Purple Loosestrife Scabious Sunflower

You can never have too many flowers, and the more flowers you have, the more bees will love your garden!

Don't forget the colder months

It's not just in spring and summer that bees need your help. Provide safe homes for them to shelter and hibernate in over winter. Here's how:
A few old lengths of bamboo bound together makes a great bug box
Drill some holes into an fence post for an instant bee hotel
Grow winter and early flowering plants as bees need food as soon as they emerge from hibernation (hebe and lungwort are good
Provide nest boxes (several different designs are available in the shops)