The Bee Garden by Maureen Little

Author:Maureen Little [Maureen Little]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781848035737
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
Published: 2012-04-26T16:00:00+00:00

Plants for bumblebees

I have said elsewhere that if you provide suitable food for honeybees then you will also be helping other insects. This is undoubtedly true when it comes to the ones we have been looking at here. All of these insects will appreciate every single honeybee-friendly plant you have in your garden. If you have a particular penchant for bumblebees, however, and particularly those with a longer proboscis like Bombus hortorum (the garden bumblebee, whose proboscis is some 13.5mm long), you may like to grow some plants whose flowers are more adapted to pollination by bumblebees rather than honeybees.

I am thinking particularly of plants with long corolla tubes, like the clovers, Trifolium pratense (red clover) and Trifolium hybridum (alsike clover) (page 131), as well as Buddleja (butterfly bush) (page 85) and Jasminum (jasmine). Monarda (bee balm), too, has long corolla tubes which even some bumblebees would struggle with. Despite its common name the nectar of cultivated varieties (which are hybrids of Monarda fistulosa and M. didyma, whose respective average corolla tube lengths are 7.5mm and 15mm) is only accessible to a few bees.

There are flowers which have ‘lips’ too, which only the bumblebee has sufficient weight to prise open to get at the nectar. These include Aconitum (monkshood) and Antirrhinum (snapdragon) (page 41). In addition there are those plants which have ‘trumpet’-shaped flowers which, although not inaccessible to honeybees, are easier for bumblebees to access, like Cerinthe major var. purpurascens (honeywort) (page 132) and the bumblebee plant par excellence, Digitalis (foxglove) (page 133). I have some of the latter in my garden and whenever I look there is at least one bumblebee making an expedition into the far recesses of the flowers, and then backing out in a rather ungainly fashion.

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