To attract bees in Australia, plant diverse, colourful flowers (especially blue, purple, yellow) like Lavender, Banksia, Grevillea, Rosemary, and herbs (Basil, Mint) that bloom year-round, provide shallow water sources with pebbles, offer nesting spots like bare earth or bee hotels for native bees, and stop using pesticides to keep them safe. Grouping flowers and choosing single-petaled varieties also helps them forage efficiently.
Pick plants that are suitable to the growing conditions of your area. Choose varieties that flower across the seasons - the longer the flowering period, the longer bees will be attracted to your garden. When harvesting food plants like carrots, leave a few to create an umbel or flower head full of nectar and pollen.
Bee-Friendly Gardening Tips
It's best to grow a variety of plants with flowers in a range of colors that bloom from spring through autumn – the showier, the better. As you're selecting flowers, remember that bees are highly attracted to white, yellow, and shades of purple and blue.
In addition to nectar, bees feed on pollen that they get from flowers. Some flowers that attract bees are sunflowers, lavender, wildflowers, and bee balm. Bees can see colors in the spectrum ranging from ultraviolet to orange and have been noticed to prefer purple, blue, and yellow flowers.
The "3 feet, 3 miles rule" is a beekeeping guideline for moving hives: move them less than 3 feet (so they find the new spot easily using landmarks and scent) or more than 3 miles (so they're forced to reorient to a completely new landscape). Moving them an intermediate distance (e.g., 50 feet to 2 miles) confuses forager bees, causing them to return to the old, empty location and get lost.
Varroa Mites are the #1 enemy of honey bee and beekeepers around the world. These external parasites feed on the blood of adult honey bees, and reproduce on honey bee pupae. They can considerably weaken individual bees, and often vector viruses and other pathogens between bees.
Soda Bottle Bee Trap
Cut off the top third of the soda bottle. Fill the bottom part of the bottle with sugar water or sweet juice. This mixture will attract the bees.
Follow these October beekeeping tips to keep your bees safe and healthy and make the most of the fall season.
Simply offer a drop or two of sugar water, on a spoon or similar, to the bumblebee's head and then allow it time to recuperate. Please do not use brown sugar or honey. Brown sugar is harder for bumblebees to digest and honey can contain pathogens which might make the bumblebee ill.
The 7/10 rule in beekeeping is a guideline for when to add a new box (super) to a hive, suggesting you add it when bees have built comb, brood, or stored honey on 7 out of 10 frames in the current box, indicating they need more space and preventing congestion, which can lead to swarming. This proactive expansion supports the colony's growth, reduces stress, and maintains natural hive behavior, but it's also important to consider factors like time of year and overall hive health, not just frame count.
Many new beekeepers buy their first colony from a beekeeping business, but you may also be able to get bees from another hobbyist beekeeper. A good place to start your research for where to buy bees is your local bee group. Ask around and find out where other beekeepers get their bees.
Use Citronella
Introducing citronella sticks or sprays around the bee colony inconveniences the bees and makes them feel in danger, pushing them to relocate over time. Make sure your citronella is close enough to the bees to affect them. Try using citronella sticks along with a smoking treatment for the best results.
However, keep in mind that bee colonies can die, even if you do everything right. That's why we recommend beginner beekeepers start with two hives.
How to help bees in your garden - five tips for attracting bees
Timing is crucial when it comes to fall feeding. In many regions, it's best to start feeding in late summer or early fall, typically in August or September, to ensure that bees have enough time to store sufficient food before winter sets in.
Varroa destructor, the Varroa mite, is a parasitic mite that attacks and feeds on honey bees. These mites are currently the greatest threat to beekeepers and their colonies; varroa is the most serious pest of honey bees, inflicting more damage and higher economic costs than all other apicultural diseases.
Honey bees keep the inside temperature of the winter cluster at about 95 degrees by exercising muscles and expending energy. A bee dies when its body temperature is 41 degrees. At 41 degrees the bee is not able to operate or flex its shivering muscles to stay warm.
Some flowers trick bees and even 'dine on' bees. Picker Plants are among these. Sweet smells are the best for Bees. Stinky smells are good for Wasps, Hornets, Yellow Jackets and Flies.
Vinegar: a limited and temporary deterrent
While the sharp scent of vinegar can make an area less appealing to bees, it does not reliably repel them and should never be used to harm them.
While Doug Somerville, a technical specialist in honeybees with New South Wales Department of Primary Industries, notes that “bees are twice as attracted to sugar syrup than they are to honey5,” there are also myriad less-than-desirable consequences to making carpenter bee traps out of sugar water.
Think all bees look alike? Well we don't all look alike to them, according to a new study that shows honeybees, who have 0.01% of the neurons that humans do, can recognize and remember individual human faces.
Honeybees generally attack only to defend their colony, but will also attack if they are seriously disturbed outside the nest. Common sources of attack stimulus for honeybees include alarm pheromone, vibrations, carbon dioxide, hair, and dark colors (Crane 1990).
Observations at 2-3 m range revealed that both juvenile magpies were catching and eating bees, the two together taking a total of at least 10 bees during about an hour of watching.