As spring arrives, bees have begun foraging on early blooming flowers to provide them with an abundance of nutrition. Their diet remains diverse.
Bumble bees love to visit the violet, tubular pom-pom flowers of chive. It grows well in gardens with sunny spots and well-draining soil, and their tubular flowers attract them like no other plant can.
Bumble bees pollinate cucurbits such as melons and squash, as well as Joe Pye Weed with its tall vanilla-scented flower heads.
Crocus
Honey bees love crocus flowers because they close at night and only fully open during sunlight, providing food as well as providing new queens a place to store fat reserves before hibernation again.
Bumble bees feed heavily on crocus pollen forage for their new queen bee, who must consume plenty of pollen to build her ovaries before founding a colony of her own.
Spring blooming flowers such as crocus, daffodils and snowdrops provide bees with much-needed sustenance after the cold months of winter. Furthermore, they serve as important nectar sources for newly emerging worker bees and bumblebee queens.
Winter blooming shrubs that provide both pollen and nectar include hybrid winter witch hazel (Hamamelis x intermedia; Zones 5-8) or cornelian cherry (Cornus mas; Zones 4-8) with fragrant flowers opening from midwinter through late winter – perfect choices for urban gardens with limited space!
Maple
Red maple flowers are beloved honey bee food sources. Honeybees take great pleasure in visiting them early each spring as a protein source; in turn, this ensures fruit sets.
Bees gather nectar, pollen and floral oils from tree and shrub blooms to sustain themselves and their developing young. Pollen transfers between flowers of the same species in order to fertilize and produce seeds – pollen carried on bee bodies also serves to transfer genetic information between flowers as part of plant reproduction.
Native shrubs like huckleberries, currants and thimbleberries provide bees with abundant food sources. Willow trees such as Ulmus pumila provide midsummer forage as an emergency food source if spring or summer blooms are cut short by late frosts. Furthermore, broadleaf bigleaf maple (Acer macrocarpa) offers sweet treats for bees and humans alike when harvested for its syrup, growing quickly across varying soil conditions.
Primroses
Evening primroses (Oenothera) bloom at night and are pollinated by sphinx moths from dusk to dawn. Their sweet scent draws in pollinators as well as moths; additionally, these flowers contain sticky viscin that collects pollen grains transferred by pollinators onto subsequent flowers’ stigmas – bees often fail at pollination as they lack vision to see moth trails that carry pollen grains; this means bees may miss an opportunity for pollen transference transferring their pollen grains onto new flowers’ stigmas! Bees lack sight of scent trails left by moths which act as efficient pollinators when visiting evening primroses which is why bees tend not as effective pollinators of evening primroses’ flowers which means pollination opportunities may pass them up compared with moth pollination services which collect and transfer pollen grains onto next flowers visited and sometimes miss this process altogether!
Cowslips (Primula veris) bloom with vibrant yellow or orange-hued blooms that attract bees in spring, making this woodland flower an easy addition to any garden with bright clumps of blooms and deep green foliage.
Mahonia (Mahonia x hollandica) makes an easy addition to deciduous trees and shrubs for winter blooming, producing clusters of fragrant deep pink or lilac-colored blooms from late autumn through spring – look out for varieties like Freckles or Wisley Cream!
