Get the buzz on attracting local bees to your backyard

We recently celebrated World Bee Day! 🐝In its second year now the United Nations launched this annual event to raise awareness about the crucial role bees play in our ecosystem. 

Bees are the busy pollinators many of our crops require and they promote much needed biodiversity. Some of them also make honey, which is awesome, isn’t it? 

Honey is much healthier for you than sugar and has antibacterial and antifungal properties. It’s also said that a spoon a day of honey from bees that live close to you can help relieve seasonal allergies! How cool is that? 

In the spirit of World Bee Day we popped in to our local council nursery to find out more about the best plants to have in your garden to attract bees! 

Now, the first thing to stress is this is very much location specific. At our nursery in Sydney they have both native and indigenous sections. Native being from Australia and indigenous meaning cultivated from cuttings in the local area.  Both can be good for attracting bees and it’s up to you to decide which way you want to go – indigenous or native or a combination of the two. Either way you need to consult a local bee gardening expert like we did and ask what’s right for the bees near you.

We left with a list of suggestions that I’m going to research a bit more before we plant our very own garden resort for the local bees! 

Here are some of the top bee attractors:

🐝Westringia Fruticosa (Coastal Rosemary) 

🐝Callistemon ‘Captain Cook’ (Dwarf bottlebrush)

🐝Callistemon ‘Little John’ (Bottlebrush)

🐝Scaevola Mauve Cluster (Fairy Fan Flower) 

🐝Thryptomene saxicola (Thryptomene)

🐝Malaleuca thymifolia (Thyme Honey Myrtle)

🐝Olearia ‘Ghost Town’

🐝Brachysome Valencia (Cut Leaf Daisy)

🐝Leptspermum ‘Love Affair’ (Tea Tree)

🐝Leptspermum ‘Cardwell’ (Tea Tree)

 

Have you found ways to attract bees to your garden? We’d love to hear your tips!

Helen Barry

Helen Barry is a Sydney-based writer and content creator on a Zero Waste adventure! Editor of eco magazine War On Waste Weekly, Helen is also the mother of two Mini Waste Warriors.

2 Comments
  1. I read bees like purple/blue flowers so I planted some salvia. I also have a massive rosemary bush that’s currently flowering like crazy and the bees love it!

    1. That’s interesting isn’t it that they like purple. That’s my favourite colour, too! We have rosemary at our back door and it’s flowering too. I’m yet to see any bees buzzing around it though. Apparently if you make beeswax wraps in your kitchen the bees come inside to see what you’re up to!

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