Spring flowering plants attractive to bees
Sources of early nectar are important to emerging bees who will be foraging for food. In late winter and early spring food can be scarce which is why it really helps the bees to plant early flowers.
One of the best garden sounds early in February is the gentle buzz of an emerging solitary bee.
Illustrated below are some of the best early flowering perennials to attract bees:
Just Bee magic
Before we look at some of the traditional early spring plants, check out this video.This is Scilla (the variety is probably S. siberica). I took the image at Launde Abby, and bees covered the entire planting. I could hear them from about 2m away. It is only phone video as it is all I had with me, but not only was it full of bees, it was full of different types of bees. A pretty plant, perennial, easy to grow and fully hardy.
More Spring Flowering Plants attractive to Bees
Bees are critical to a plant's growing cycle. As bees travel around the garden, they pollinate flowers by transferring pollen from the male parts of a flower to the female parts of a flower of the same species, which results in the fertilisation of plant ovaries and the production of seeds.
The images above are Bluebells (left), These are English bluebells, Hyacinthoides non-scripts as compared with the Spanish bluebells, which may look similar but are an invasive non-native species. (How to tell the difference? )
The centre image is a Hellebore, and far right, the familiar forget-me-not, Latin name Myosotis. These plants are easy to grow, in the case of forget-me-nots, too easy, as they are prolific self seeders.
Hellebores flower from December until spring and are a good source of early nectar. They are a reliable perennial returning year after year and will spread into clumps.
Rosemary flowers maybe small, but they are attractive to the bees. Rosemary is a modest-sized shrub and grows best in sunny dry spot.
Pulmonaria are very early flowering, ideal for the emerging solitary bees. Pulmonaria will grow in partial shade.
It's not a great image, but it does show that snowdrops have value to bees. One of the main benefits of planting snowdrops is that they flower very early in the year, just as the bees emerge.
Many Viburnums flower early in the year and have scented flowers.
Rhododendrons are an early flowering evergreen shrubs which are a good source of nectar for the bees.
Primula Veris, our native primrose, is an early spring-flowering plant and ideal for emerging bees. Primroses grow best in dappled shade and soil which is not too dry.
A great early flowering combination of snowdrops and aconites both flowering through January and February. Both are woodland plants which grow best in semi shade conditions.