Bees and other pollinators are an important part of a healthy environment and ecosystem. The garden you see outside your window and the yummy food kept in your fridge is all work from bees, but that is only the beginning of their duties. Keeping the cycle of life turning, without the work of bees, we risk disastrous changes to our planet.
Doing your part of ensure a healthy future for our bees is a super easy thing to do! Inviting bees into your garden and allowing them to get to work in a safe space is very important to their future survival.
Here are 10 easy ways to attract bees:
10 Ways to attract bees into your garden
1. Create a diverse planting system
Always have something flowering throughout the year by mixing perennials, biennials, annuals and bulbs in your garden beds. This ensures that there is always something for the bees to reap.
2. Use plants with a variety of colours of shapes
Bees love purple, blue, orange, yellow or white. Classic cottage garden flowers (Lavender, Cornflowers, Poppies, Delphiniums, Forget-me-nots, Salvias etc.) and Australian native flowers (Wattle, Abelia, Butterfly bush, Honey-myrtle, Bottlebrush etc.) are some of the favourites for the bees.
3. Allow ‘weeds’ to grow and vegetable to bolt.
They may seem messy and ugly to some, but wildflowers such as dandelions & clovers play an important part in a bee’s life. Dandelions, for example, offer both pollen and nectar. These ‘weeds’ often flower early in the season, giving bees something to benefit from before the influx of spring blossoms.
Allowing a few of your herbs or vegetables to go to seed gives the bees something to keep them going during the colder months. I know it can look a bit unkept, but your garden will thank you!
4. Abandon or reduce your use of pesticides
Pesticides are extremely threatening to all pollinators in your garden. Spraying a plant could poison any insect that attempted to collect nectar or pollen from that flower. Without pollinators such as bees, we wouldn’t have such beautiful gardens and ecosystems.
5. Consider a productive garden
Vegetables and fruit trees offer a lot of nutrients and pollen for our busy bee friends, making a productive garden extra exciting and beneficial.
6. Plant single petal flowers as oppose to double petal
The single flowers offer more pollen and nutrients and as also easy to access than deeper set flowers with multiple petal layers.
7. Plant in locations where bees will be mostly likely to visit
They love sunny places that have limited exposure to strong winds, but also enjoy a bit of shade to rest.

8. Create bee hotels and nests for solitary bees and native hoards
Using organic materials from your backyard you can create temporary nests and resting points for many pollinators. Bunnings and the Diggers Club have insect hotels for purchase, but binding small hollow sticks together creates the same effect. There are many tutorials on YouTube that go into great detail on how to make homes for bees and other pollinators
9. Give them a feed by leaving out shallow cups of sugar water
Mix a 1:1 ratio of white sugar and water. Boil the water and sugar to completely dissolve and sit aside to cool before use. When the sugar water is nice and cool, pour some in a shallow dish with small rocks or pebbles. The pebbles give the bees a safe spot to sit on while they ingest, assuring that they won’t accidently drown in the sugar water.
10. Let them be(e)!
Try your best not to disturb bees while they do their important work. Bees do not harm unless they feel stressed and threatened. Try your best to admire from afar and to do your watering when they aren’t around. Teach your family the importance of observing from a distance and respecting their busy work.
Have you enjoyed this blog and do you need further help to create a bee friendly garden?