How To Attract Bees To Your Vegetable Garden

Bees are essential for pollination and especially important when it comes to successfully growing your own vegetables.

If your veggie plants are lush and healthy, but they don’t produce much food, it probably means there’s a lack of bees visiting your garden.

In this post, I’m going to show you exactly how to attract bees to your vegetable garden by planting flowers. Plus I’ll give you tons of tips, ideas, and advice too.

How Bees Help Your Vegetables Grow

A long time ago, when I was a newbie gardener, I read an article that a woman wrote about how, when she first started out gardening, she had never been a fan of growing flowers.

She had a huge vegetable garden and that was her true passion. At that time, there were hardly any flowers in her yard at all. In fact, she also said she was the only gardener in her neighborhood.

She then talked about how every year the plants in her vegetable garden would grow huge and have tons of flowers, but would hardly produce any vegetables.

Related Post: How To Pollinate Squash By Hand For Maximum Production

I’m not sure what her “aha” moment was, but somehow she realized that the problem was the fact that she didn’t have any other flowering plants in her yard to attract the bees and other pollinators.

After realizing this, she began adding plants that they love the most. The result? She swears that this one change has made all the difference in the amount of food her vegetable produces.

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Plant More Flowers

After reading that story, I really started to take notice of the plethora of bees in my flower gardens. Some of the blooms were completely covered. Then I walked over to my vegetable garden and I could immediately tell the difference.

I mean, sure there were some flying around in there too, but not nearly as many as I saw swarming the flowers in my other garden.

So, if your vegetable garden is growing and flowering, but not producing much food, then you probably need to attract more bees.

Related Post: How To Grow Vegetables: The Ultimate Veggie Garden Guide

How To Attract Bees To Your Vegetable Garden

Attracting bees and other pollinators to your vegetable garden isn’t hard. All you need to do is plant flowers around your beds and intermix them with your veggies.

I like to interplant a variety of annuals with my veggie plants. Not only are they awesome for the bees, they add tons of color to the vegetable garden too.

Plus, they’ll be done at the same time as your vegetable plants in the fall, so they’re easy to pull and replant them every year.

Another thing you can do is plant herbs with your vegetables. They’re great companions, useful for us, and when they bloom they’re bee magnets.

Perennials are also great, especially native ones, and they will grow and bloom year after year. You could use them to border your veggie beds or intermix them.

Related Post: 21 Of The Best Plants & Flowers Bees That Love

More Tips

• Surround your veggie plot with flowers – Adding flowering plants to your garden is a wonderful way to encourage pollinators to visit your veggies too. Don’t be afraid to mix them together.

• Don’t broadcast spray pesticides – Pesticides, even organic ones, will kill the good bugs right along with the bad ones. So always target only the pest insect, and never broadcast any type of insecticidal spray over your vegetable bed.

• Plant flowers in groupings – Creating groupings of colorful flowers along with your veggies will make it easier for the bees to find your garden.

• Provide fresh water for them – Giving the bees a source of fresh water will keep them coming back to your vegetable garden more often.

For even more information about attracting bees to your garden, read How To Create A Bee-Friendly Garden.

Recommended Reading

• Attracting Native Pollinators
• Pollinator Friendly Gardening
• Our Native Bees

More Posts About Vegetable Gardening

• How To Decide What To Plant In A Vegetable Garden
• 40+ Vegetables That Grow In Shade
• 17 Easy Vegetables To Grow In Your Garden
• How To Grow Blueberries In Pots Or The Garden

Share your favorite ways to attract bees to your vegetable garden in the comments section below.