How to Design a Garden for Native Bees: A Complete Habitat Guide

Most people know about the honeybee crisis, but honeybees aren't the only ones in trouble. Other pollinators are also declining. Researchers now emphasize studying all pollinators, learning that native bees not only pollinate crops alongside honeybees but improve honeybee pollination efficiency. Some native bee species are even more efficient pollinators than honeybees.

Nurturing a garden habitat for native bees gives them a place to live, eat, and raise young. Creating bee habitat creates wildlife habitat for all — attracting butterflies, birds, hummingbirds, and other insects. Here's how and why to design for native bees.

Why Care About Pollinators?

Pollinators provide vital services. Bees, birds, and bats pollinate over a third of our crops. From morning coffee and evening wine to lunchtime pear and sandwich mustard — our table owes its existence to pollinators. Most are insects: butterflies, moths, beetles, European honeybees, native bees, even flies and wasps — all pollinate homegrown vegetables, orchards, and flowering plants globally.

What Can You Do?

Pesticides, habitat loss, fragmentation, and degradation have the largest negative impact. Help by providing pesticide-free habitat. Any home gardener, even with the smallest garden, can make a difference. Besides, it's great fun.

Features of a Native Bee Habitat

1. Diversity with Blocks of Color

This large block of orange California poppies (Eschscholzia californica) with deep blue ceanothus attracts native bees better than scattered plants.

The Xerces Society promotes planting diverse flowering plants for pollinators in large color blocks. Like a flashing neon light, diverse blocks point pollinators to the party. Provide:

• Several plant species flowering simultaneously
• Combination of flowering annuals and perennials
• Flowers of different sizes, shapes, colors
• Color blocks: ~3.5 ft × 3.5 ft patches of single species/color
• Year-round food: flowering plants in all growing seasons

Many home gardens can't have that much diversity, but you'll be surprised how many pollinators a small space supports. Do what you can. This new garden replaces Clarkia and poppy annuals with flowering perennials as the year progresses. As it matures, annuals/perennials give way to flowering trees and shrubs.

2. Native Plants for Native Bees

UC Berkeley Urban Bee Lab has studied native bees and food choices for a decade. Through the Urban California Native Bee Survey, researchers found local native bees prefer local native plants 4:1 over nonnatives — not surprising given millennia of coevolution.

Native bees need nectar (carbs) and pollen (protein). Some plants provide one or the other; aster family plants like Pacific aster (Symphyotrichum chilense) provide both. The aster family is arguably the single most important for insects — the central "disk" is actually many flowers, providing high-concentration food on a single landing pad. See the many flowers on a seaside daisy (Erigeron glaucus) central disk.

Along with asters, native buckwheat (Eriogonum spp.), sage (Cleveland sage Salvia clevelandii shown), California lilac (Ceanothus spp.), and manzanita (Arctostaphylos spp.) are prized by California native bees.

UC Berkeley Urban Bee Lab website lists best bee plants for California. Gordon Frankie's new book California Bees and Blooms: A Guide for Gardeners and Naturalists details plants California native bees find irresistible.

No matter where you live: How to Find the Right Native Plants for Your Yard

3. Water

All creatures need water. Options for insects: simple birdbath, ponds, recirculating fountains (lovely focal points + habitat). Follow local water guidelines. Replenish every few days or recirculate to eliminate mosquito larvae.

Insects also feed on soil minerals/salts; a small muddy puddle in a large bowl or garbage can lid under soil provides additional nutrients.

4. Full Sun

Insects are cold-blooded — need sun's warmth to move. Like morning coffee, a sunny garden gives insects the boost to wake up and get going.

5. Cover and Places to Raise Young

Bee hotels (bee nests/boxes) offer space for female bees to lay eggs. Unlike European honeybees (hives), most native bees live alone in the ground. Ground-nesters dig holes or use vacated ones. Others use plant material and wood holes. Ground-nesters dislike wading through mulch — leave sunny bare dirt areas.

See how to build your own bug boxes

Photo by Flickr user echoe69

6. No "Cides"

Pesticides, herbicides, and other "cides" are toxic to wildlife, especially insects. What pesticide companies don't want you to know: good bugs find bad bugs via plant distress signals and chemical signatures of pest droppings — "Dinner's here!" Good bugs target and destroy bad bugs quickly. Be patient. Accept some nibbles — might be a leafcutter bee using your western redbud (Cercis occidentalis) to soften its nest.

Pesticides disrupt natural cycles. Leave bad bugs, good bugs come. If bad bugs get out of control threatening plant health, water spray or homemade nontoxic concoction reduces populations. In six years of native plant gardening, only needed this for seasonal lace bug outbreaks on Toyon (Heteromeles arbutifolia).

The six basic elements of gardening for native bees are simple. Pleasures and rewards are enormous. Go make your own habitat and watch the daffy fanfare of pollinators making homes, providing for young, feeding on your flowers, and putting on a great show.

Resources on Native Bees

• UC Berkeley Urban Bee Lab — wealth of info on California native bees
• California Bees and Blooms, by Gordon W. Frankie et al.
• Attracting Native Pollinators, by the Xerces Society
• Field Guide to the Common Bees of California, by Gretchen LeBuhn
• Pollinator-Friendly Parks, by Shepherd, Vaughan, Hoffman Black
• USDA article "Honey Bees and Colony Collapse Disorder" — latest on honeybee crisis

More: Gardening for the Bees, and Why It's a Good Thing