# what to plant for bees



## Brian McC (Nov 19, 2014)

I have about 1/2 acre available to plant for food for bees. I was thinking of both white and yellow sweet cover. I'm in a highly intense ag. area and want to keep the bees as close to home as possible. Any other suggestions?


----------



## honey jhar (Jun 5, 2014)

Welcome to beesource!

I am still slogging through info trying to find that out myself! You will discover that the search button is your friend. Using the advanced search, I types in "plants for bees" and changed the filter for any posts, ever... here http://www.beesource.com/forums/search.php?searchid=5451170

There is also a forum for gardening, plants for bees here 
http://www.beesource.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?274-Garden-Planting-for-Bees

I am hoping the links work!


----------



## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

I have 18 acres. I planted a lot of fruit trees, linden, sourwood, raintree and I already had black locust. I planted yellow sweet, white sweet, hubam, purple prairie and white dutch clovers. Also birdsfoot trefoil, alfalfa, hairy vetch and chicory. There was already a lot of wild mustard. And of course dandelions. The first blooms are dandelions and the mustard followed by the yellow sweet, the white sweet, the hubam, the white dutch, the alfalfa, the purple prairie, the trefoil, goldenrod and the chicory. The white sweet lasts a lot longer than the yellow sweet. The hubam seems to last longer than the white sweet (it's a form of white sweet). The chicory blooms past the first few light frosts up to the first hard freeze. I also planted a little ironweed, Joe Pye weed, asters and echinacea .


----------



## Chemguy (Nov 26, 2012)

I've taken to overseeding my lawn with white dutch clover. This year, the clover did not quit in my area until July and the bees worked it nonstop. Catmint is a favorite here (for a short while in the summer) and so is autumn olive (early to mid Spring, but considered highly invasive).

In my neck of the woods, the Amish areas tend to have more pasture and wider field margins, and this proves to be a good source of forage. You might get some good ideas come spring, by walking through (or viewing from afar) any field margins that aren't worked regularly. The plants that you find there will be ones that will do well for you, though not all of them will be attractive to honeybees.


----------



## Dominic (Jul 12, 2013)

Michael Bush said:


> I have 18 acres. I planted a lot of fruit trees, linden, sourwood, raintree and I already had black locust. I planted yellow sweet, white sweet, hubam, purple prairie and white dutch clovers. Also birdsfoot trefoil, alfalfa, hairy vetch and chicory. There was already a lot of wild mustard. And of course dandelions. The first blooms are dandelions and the mustard followed by the yellow sweet, the white sweet, the hubam, the white dutch, the alfalfa, the purple prairie, the trefoil, goldenrod and the chicory. The white sweet lasts a lot longer than the yellow sweet. The hubam seems to last longer than the white sweet (it's a form of white sweet). The chicory blooms past the first few light frosts up to the first hard freeze. I also planted a little ironweed, Joe Pye weed, asters and echinacea .


That's a nice mixture that should give a good bloom calendar.

A lot of these belong to the same family though, and share many diseases. Adding in some members of the amaryllidaceae family (chives, onions), a few more asteraceae (burdock, asters, tussilago), lamiaceae (sage, catnip), and asparagaceae (siberian squill) might allow for an even more diversified and healthy field. And though most of your crops are already legumes, my bees really seem to love vetch, much more than the rest (save for sweet clover), and hairy vetch is pretty good at nitrogen fixation.

That being said, I'm pretty jealous that you have the land to do that. 

I'm curious about the chicory, though. Do your bees like it? We have a moderate amount of it over here, and I've only very rarely seen any bees on it.


----------



## tsmullins (Feb 17, 2011)

Dominic said:


> I'm curious about the chicory, though. Do your bees like it? We have a moderate amount of it over here, and I've only very rarely seen any bees on it.


Chicory only produces nectar until noon. In our area, chicory is very reliable. Sometimes other nectar sources would fail to produce, the bees would hammer the chicory. Chicory blooms a long time for us.

Shane


----------



## AmericasBeekeeper (Jan 24, 2010)

Welcome Brian!


----------



## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>I'm curious about the chicory, though. Do your bees like it? We have a moderate amount of it over here, and I've only very rarely seen any bees on it.

It seems to make nectar only certain times of the day, but it blooms before the summer drought, through the summer drought, through the light frosts in the fall, all the way to a hard freeze. So it often fills gaps in the flow.


----------



## mbevanz (Jul 23, 2012)

New book at Wicwas Press. Garden Plants for Honeybees. Author Peter Lindtner. AWESOME.


----------



## Dominic (Jul 12, 2013)

tsmullins said:


> Chicory only produces nectar until noon. In our area, chicory is very reliable. Sometimes other nectar sources would fail to produce, the bees would hammer the chicory. Chicory blooms a long time for us.
> 
> Shane


It does have a great blooming period, it flowered much longer than pretty much anything else, except maybe for birdsfoot trefoil.

Perhaps it just has to do with the geography: patches of chicory here might have been too small to compete with a possible more attractive species nearby. I'll make myself a note not to disregard chicory completely based off this year's observations.


----------



## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

My goal is NOT to provide enough of a flow for a crop, but to fill in the gaps. Chicory seems to do that well.


----------



## wcnewby (Sep 28, 2014)

I've been looking at the same sort of sites for a while... Milkweed is listed as a major source of nectar and pollen. I found some on a bike ride, marked it with my gps and returned later in the year to collect pods. I sowed them this fall.... hoping for a nice milkweed garden. Where I read about it, they say if you shake it nectar literally falls out of the blooms.


----------

