Gardening tips
Bee-friendly balcony flowers: This is how you support the beneficial insects
You don’t need a garden to help bees, bumblebees, etc. find food; a balcony is enough.
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No fruit, no vegetables and no flowers – without bees the world would be a different place. If you want to support the beneficial flying insects, you can do a lot for them even without a garden. Bee-friendly balcony flowers provide food for the animals.
If you don’t have a garden but want to provide insects with a source of food, you can support the animals with bee-friendly balcony flowers. Without honey bees and bumblebees as well as many other insects, the fertilization of crops would not be possible. Supporting animals is therefore essential. Unfortunately, due to numerous large-scale monocultures in agriculture, nectar collectors do not always find enough food. If you have a balcony, that is already enough to help the insects. You can find out here which plants are suitable and what solutions are available for shade balconies.
This is how you plant your balcony in a bee-friendly way
With the help of bee-friendly balcony flowers as well as ornamental plants and herbs, the flying acrobats can partially cover their needs for nectar and pollen. Varied pots and boxes on the balcony also support honey bees etc. When putting them together, however, it is important to choose the right variety, because not all classic summer bloomers are bee-friendly balcony flowers.
After the ice saints, it’s time for bee-friendly balcony flowers
The name gives it away: It can get icy cold again during the Ice Saints between May 11th and 15th. On these days, ground frost can occur at night, even though spring has long since arrived. That’s why you only start planting bee-friendly balcony flowers after the Ice Saints.
Not everything that blooms is good
Popular flower species that bloom all summer, such as geraniums and petunias, are useless for insects to feed on. This also applies to plants with double flowers, because then the supply of pollen and nectar is usually very low. These so-called double flowers are plants in which the breeding intention is that the stamens are also petals, so they only offer color. Unfortunately, bees can no longer find pollen and nectar there. When purchasing, you should therefore make sure to only select flowering plants. Even if you only buy spring bloomers, you will no longer be able to provide the animals with food in the summer.
Choose bee-friendly food plants
Luckily, there are a variety of bee-friendly balcony flowers. These include, for example:
- Scented stone rich
- zinnia
- Fan flower
- Snowflake flower
- vanilla flower
- flour sage
You can even sow plants yourself, such as:
If you have little to no sun on your balcony, you don’t have to despair. Both the fuchsia and the bluebell also thrive on shady balconies and provide food for bees.
Long-term solutions
You can choose between plants that you can buy or grow every year and those that don’t have to be replanted every year. Perennials are therefore well suited as bee-friendly balcony plants, as are bush mallow, red coneflower, tall sedum and cranesbill. Herbs are also useful choices, including lemon balm, sage, thyme and mountain savory. People and animals benefit from these bee-friendly balcony flowers.
In addition, you will help the flying artists if you avoid using chemical pesticides, as these can harm the bees. You can also give various insects a home in the form of a Insect hotels (homemade or purchased).
Sources: My beautiful garden, Nabu, Code check
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