Welcome to NGA, @emy !

emy said:

Half-black Bumble Bee
and penstemon flower

Green Sweat Bee
(Agapostemon)

Orchard Mason Bee (Osmia lignaria)

Western Bumble Bee on
Maximilian Sunflower
(Helianthus maximiliani)

Bees prefer blue, purple, and yellow flowers, and sweet fragrances. They see ultraviolet colors – found on the flowers such as buttercups and black-eyed Susans.

I have seed packets for Bee Butterfly and Hummingbirds dues to be scatterred on the compost I spread on a 30" edged circle over Winter. We'll see how that works.
\Plus, I have specific native flowers plants inside to transplant out. Most are self-sowing. I hope that works.

I have generally had honeybees around my yard in past years. I'm mostly organic (willing to spray poison ivy patches but not much more). I'm not surprised to see the honeybees, but I don't know where they live. They just like my yard.

So far in my Z5 garden my sensation lilac has been a hit w the bees. Like others have said, salvia will be a favorite later in the season.

Brozeus! The sensation lilacs are very pretty and I bet they smell good too!

The Miss Kim Lilac is blooming in my front yard and it smells heavenly!!

Wow sounds so nice!! The bees are going crazy for the wild arugula flowers in my garden right now. Wish it was lilacs.

For some reason I'm thinking lilacs don't grow well down here in Texas... my yummy gardenias are blooming but no bee visitors. When they were budding the ants kept trying to farm aphids. We had an ongoing battle; I would wash the aphids off and hours later the ants would be back at it!! They are very persistent little creatures but I was too and I won that battle.

Bees do seem to like flowers from plants in the Brassica family.

"Bees do seem to like flowers from plants in the Brassica family."

Boy, do they ever! Last year some of my broccoli went to flowers because I wasn't tending it very well and the bees were all over it... this year I'll do that on purpose (I'm thinking it wouldn't be a bad idea to put a plant or two near cucumbers and squash, just to attract the bees.)

Weed, that's a great idea!!

I was just out there this morning with a little paintbrush pollinating the squash.

Borage attracts a lot of bees. I try to have a couple of borage plants near my tomatoes every year. They volunteer very well.

Karen

I love borage -- need to plant some again!

The last time I grew it some really ugly caterpillars devastated it, along with my petunias and who knows what else... so of course I Bt'd 'em... and then found out they were Painted Lady babies (On the upside, ever since that little episode I'm a LOT more careful to find out what any sort of "bugs" are before getting rid of them!)

A generally organic yard is the best way to support pollinators. But I'm going further. I set up 3 edged beds in my back yard last year. One is for Spring bulbs and daylilies. But the othe other 2 are for the bees/hummers/butterflies/pollinators.

One is meadow flowers, the other is a hummer/bee/butterfly bed. The meadow flowers are barely starting to bloom. The other is just emerging (planted later).

Very nice, Yardenman.

I have a corner of the cottage garden growing wild, mostly because I'm trying to snuff out the Bermuda grass that's making me miserable! It's working pretty good in this area, may have to extend the efforts...

Wildflowers for pollinators in the cottage garden

A little late to the party on this, but I agree with @weedwhacker on the broccoli. I grew some purple sprouting broccoli last year but my wife and daughter didn't really enjoy the taste, so eventually I stopped harvesting and let it go to seed. The bees were sure thankful!

Just an update. The meadow flower bed is going insect-crazy. There are so MANY small bees around them and I don't know where they came from. But they found the meadow flowers.

Yeah that's a sweet william, but it was in the meadow flower packet.

Here is the meadow from the house. All yellow something and sweet williams... My flower-ignorance is impressive, but I'm new to these. Seriously, someone had to tell me what sweet williams were. I'm a veggie gardener, just expanding my horizons.LOL!

You may be a veggie gardener, Yardenman -- but you're doing a great job of bringing in the pollinators! (and even learning about flowers in the process...)

I took your suggestion, @Weedwhacker and put these two Crookneck squash plants next to the flowering wild arugula. (If you look hard enough, you can see a bee on one of the flowers) I should soon have more squash than I want or need.

Those all look like very happy plants, Christine

Weedwhacker said:Those all look like very happy plants, Christine

That should work out really well!!

They look very nice, good job!

Smooth Blue Aster.