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Plants with Purpose - Feed Your Bees!
MEANDERING up the garden, blinking stupidly in the unaccustomed but welcome sunshine of late January, I crept with trepidation to the beehive. Trepidation, because no matter how well I fed them in autumn, I always fear the 'Spring Silence of a Failed Colony'.
A couple of dazed looking individuals were clinging to the mouse-guard that protects the hive entrance from small, over wintering rodents. OK. Not all dead – so far so good. Then, wheeling in with massive knee-baskets full of dirty white pollen came a squadron of sleek workers, who disappeared into the dark of the hive, nudging replacements to come out and go for forage.
This was good! Not only had they survived, but also, since pollen is used to feed young brood, the queen was probably alive and laying eggs. What happens now is crucial. More warm days, and the bees will get out for more pollen and nectar. Wet weather, low temperatures, and the colony will not build. Beekeepers often feed bees syrup now, which is good insurance. But mine get well-fed in autumn, so I prefer to cross my fingers on the weather, and make sure my garden is full of plants to give them a good spring start. |
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Snowdrops, crocuses and winter aconites are excellent. All bees love lungwort with spotty leaves and pink and blue flowers, an early flowering member of the borage family. We’ll start to see bumblebees soon, which just adore buzzing around this plant. The first ones will be queens – unlike honeybees, only newly-mated queen bumblebees survive winter – they really need all the nectar and pollen plants we and nature can provide to build up their families. Pussy Willow in full bloom can sometimes sound as if a swarm has taken residence, so greedily they flock to the yellow-dusted catkins. Two other catkin trees bearing valuable pollen for the acrobatic and resourceful bees of late winter are hazel and alder, and early fruit blossom, especially Cherry Plum and Almond, are good garden bee-food too.
Winter-flowering ericas, especially E.carnea and E. x darleyensis, are sought by bees, although don’t expect heather honey from them – not enough nectar in cold weather. Gorse is always in flower, and provides bees with useful pollen.
Among the earliest wild flowers relished by bees are yellow-flowered coltsfoot, and butterbur, with sweet-smelling flowers and giant leaves once used to wrap butter (beats plastic any day). In the garden, these are thugs, but very useful ones, medicinally as well as for bees.
Whether you are nurturing honeybees, or looking out for our native bumble and solitary bee populations, leave your garden slightly weedy and filled with these early forage plants!
© Margaret Lear
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