Bee-havior

SHELDON: If you'd like to add some different plants to your
landscape or your yard, I'm going to show you some
different options that really feed the bees
throughout the year.

This is called "button bush". If you have a wet area
or somewhere on the back 40 and you'd like to have something
that blooms for a long time and also has 4-season interest,
button bush is the way to go. And it's also got this beautiful
seed head that if it's near the water the ducks will eat it.

But also before the seed is formed, it's this kind of
pom pom-looking Dr. Seuss white flower that's got tons
of pollen and it'll be attracting both bees and
honeybees - and butterflies, even. And then after it's done -
when it's done blooming, these will turn dark red.
The leaves will turn a nice fall color and the birds
will eat the seeds. So it's a good four-season both
interest plant and wildlife plant.

So what we're looking at here is called caryopteris
also called "blue mist". There's different varieties,
but it's usually this kind of blue color and you'll see it's
also very full of insect life which is great. It's a late
summer bloomer. Long bloom period, lots of different blooms,
and as you can see, it's easy for the insects to navigate
and move around here to get the nectar & pollen that they need.
Not native to Nebraska, but not all things need to be.

That's why you'll see a lot of honeybees on it, but there's
also these little green ones on here, so you'll see these
little native bees will also be on these non-native bushes
and that's why we say if it brings in the bees and feeds them,
it's okay to plant.

So these two plants here are liatris and then also
an annual version of monarda, which a lot of people are
probably familiar with, "bee balm".
It's called "bee balm" because obviously the bees love it.
And this one is an annual version. It's got this nice pagoda structure.
Every year, if it's in a nice dry place,it'll reseed itself as you can
see here, but it's got these pink blooms in these kind of
large flower structures, so that all of these little bees
can get in there, but also the larger bees can really grip on and get inside of there.

Then here we've got liatris. There's many different species of liatris.
This one as you can see, they're all going to be purple,
and they're going to have these nice kind of exploding flower structures.
And they're really loved by butterflies as well.

So what we've got here is a mix of some medium height as well as
tall, kind of back-of-the-border plants.
So we've got...here in the back we've got Joe Pye Weed.
This is a great plant for both bumblebees and a lot of
butterflies really love this because you have these large umbelliferous flowers.
It's kind of a big landing pad for them to kind of hang out on
and you also have jam-packed blooms all in one place instead of just one small
bloom, one thing and then they have to move on to another.

So they can just kind of hang out here and walk across it.
You'll see a lot of that action going on when you plant this one
and this one's done blooming, but these pods here are
called Wild Senna. So it's two varieties that you can get
from different places for Nebraska that both grow here,
but basically along the stem you'll have these really
colorful yellow flowers and they're actually preferred by
bumblebees, so you won't get as much of the smaller native bees or the honeybees,
but if you really enjoy the bumblebee action, they'll be all over this up & down
the stems and it blooms for a long period of time and then in the fall you have these decorative, really beautiful gorgeous - they'll turn black seed heads and then it's
really easy 'cause you can just strip this whole thing and replant some more elsewhere.

Then here we've got rudbeckia - so "black-eyed Susan", and this one might look like a
single flower, but if you look right here, that's one little
pollen right there with a little bug on there. And what's
going to happen is the bee is going to kind of walk in a circle collecting all
that pollen.

So this is less of a nectar plant like the Joe Pye weed
and it's more of a pollen plant. And so you're going to have a
lot more bees that are collecting the pollen, which is
going to be their protein for their young. So the pollen,
think of it as their "meat" since they're vegetarians.
It's good to plant a variety of both nectar-producing plants
and more specialized plants, and then also pollen plants.

So having a huge diversity is a good thing to have in your yard.
It's not just trees and other taller garden plants that you
can plant for bees, but if you simply leave the dandelions
to let them flower until you mow them when they turn into
the white, puffy seed heads, if you just leave them for a
little while to flower, both the native bees and the honeybees
will use those flowers. You can also do kind of a mix of clover
in your lawn, and it not only stays beneath the mower blades,
but it blooms beneath the mower blades, so you can have a
beautiful flowering lawn that's going to feed the bees.

Try to put something out there that's going to provide
something for the greater ecosystem around you and great entertainment to just
sit out in your yard and hear the buzz.