what about the other things that bees like in my garden
Sun, 03/16/2008 - 04:32 — Gretchen Lebuhn
Carl from Asheville pointed out that when some other flowers are in bloom, bees will be less likely to visit a sunflower. Here in California, Phacelia and Blackberries (an invasive non-native) often suck in all the bees in town. If you know something like that is going on in your yard, it would be great if you would add a comment in the notes box on the data entry page.
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Good to Know
Thanks for letting me know this phenomenon and the possibility that it may skew the results! I have yet to receive my seed packet, but when we plant the sunflowers we will be sure to place them far away from plants visited by many bees such as our Lavendar and Pride of Madeira.
I don't know if this
I don't know if this matters, but in the mid Atlantic area, when the sedum is blooming (late summer), it's the place to be for ALL the bees and butterflies. They seem to prefer it over all my other plants. I've counted 3 bumblebees and 7 skipper butterflies on a single sedum head. Since I'm new to this and haven't grown native sunflowers before, I don't know if my sedum will keep the bees away from sunflower. We'll just have to see this year.
Bees and basil
I observed a neat (and surprising to me) bee preference last summer.
We're in suburban Philadelphia - during the early summer I planted some herbs in window boxes mounted on the rails of my deck. I had chamomile, Lavender... a few other things, but I was surprised to see that the honey bees went nuts for the BASIL! They absolutely loved the stuff. I wound up not picking it for our own use because I didn't want to take it away from our fuzzy little buddies.
We always encourage wild clover to grow in our lawn (the neighbors are so annoyed that we like "weeds" in our yard, LOL!) and the bees adore that but they even left the clover for the basil.
Looking forward to seeing how they enjoy the sunflowers! :-)
"The only reason for being a bee that I know of is making honey....and the only reason for making honey is so I can eat it. "
~Winnie the Pooh in A.A. Milne's 'The House at Pooh Corner'