Our best bee attracting plant is the Mountain Mint. In fact a lot of pollinators like it

Anise Hyssop would be our number one flower for bees. There are bees everywhere on ours, hundreds at a time! And they last for months.

This oxalis is blooming now. It's invasive but I leave a lot of it because the bees seem to like it.

This looks like some kind of exotic fly on alyssum.

Tried to google cobalt blue fly and got lots of weirdy stuff, so can't help there....loving the pretty flowers tho.

It's a blue bottle fly.

I don't visit here often enough.
I knew it was a blue bottle fly.
My mom called them that.

AKA blow fly.
They lay their eggs on dead animals.
They always showed up when we killed chickens and plucked them in large quantities.
I honestly hated chicken killing time and for the life of me don't know why my parents didn't do it later in the season so it would be cold.
Pretty stupid if you ask me.

Not my camellia, but one at a nursery I was at this morning.

Great colour.

That's one plant that I sure wish I could grow, but not in my zone. They are beautiful.

I actually have one that colour but it has bloomed only twice in far too many years!

Here's a bee I saw once on a piece of cloth hanging on a clothes line. It investigated for quite a while.

I assume the bee is doing this for a good reason?

Bee hives and honeycombs are very symmetrical. I wonder if the bee was appreciating a different pattern or maybe it just likes rayon?

The bees were all over the hyacinths at Home Depot today.

You can see the nectar ouzing out of those flowers

I’ve stepped up planting bee friendly herbs like hyssop, balsam, mint, etc, looks like things are sprouting. Assembled this Flow 2 Hive all the way from the land of Oz. Totally fun. Today, roof got a coat of primer, going red for the final coat, the rest of brushed with Teak oil. Built a table to put the hive on, tucked away mere meters from the garden. Most everything done except getting a package of bees.

Bees like the snapdragons at a garden center.

Today on Mystic Spires Blue salvia, Mexican heather, and Cat Whiskers.

The most helpful plants you could grow for honey bees are those that bloom at a time when there is not much else blooming. In the midwest, it is often the late summer, especially when hot and dry.