Package of Bees
What Flowers to plant for Bees
+9
I have three hives and need flowers that will support bees throughout the seasons. Fall, Winter, Spring, Summer .
what is your location
My back yard bees love my pink oxalis. Theyre in the wood sorrel family.
I planted wild flowers for our bees. They LOVE them! But you will need to make sugar water in the winter. Do NOT let them starve. (Ask me how I know.)
Forsythias (spring), phlox (mid-summer) and asters (fall). The bees and butterflies love the asters especially.
I plant many more chives that I could ever possibly use - and let "go to seed" on purpose, the bees just flock to them! They also love my pineapple sage when it is in bloom too.
Without knowing your location there is no way to know what plants to recommend but I live in Alabama and my dad always fed his bees in the winter and until flowers were in bloom in the spring and summer. Honey bees are not active in cold weather. It has been a long time since I helped with the bees but if I were you I would contact the nearest USDA office and they can put you in touch with someone who can advise you about caring for the bees. Have you just recently acquired the bees? I hope you have good luck with them as they are so badly needed.
http://www.kswildflower.org
The first crop of honey is from dandelions. We use this to feed back to the bees in the winter. It is darker than clover honey. Could it be that they are not getting enough feed in the winter? Is snow covering their feed so they don't have good access? I don't know how many hives you have, but if you have several, then in the spring the weak colonies could be mixed with the stronger hives, (1-2 boards at a time) to make medium size hives. The bees will then take over to make the hives strong. If they are getting plenty of feed, then maybe the location of the hives might need to be changed. In northern Wyo, it gets very cold in the winter.
A bunch of my onions and chives just bloomed and I had a ton of bees! Has anyone ever made onion honey?
Contact your local beekeepers, they are a friendly lot. I have a commercial beekeeper down the road and he has helped many of the local backyard beekeepers in the area - for free!