Growing Herbs for Bees

Herbs are very beneficial for honey bees in the homestead apiary! Learn which flowering and medicinal herbs for bees you should grow in your garden.

The buzzing of pollinators in a garden—it’s a sound every gardener loves to hear in the spring. It means healthy plants and vegetables will soon arrive, and our little bee friends are helping us along the way.

Bees are essential to any homestead. In fact, they are like tiny herbalists that create natural concoctions that benefit us. They give us honey, which is antiseptic, antibacterial, and has healing properties. They give us beeswax to make our own salves and ointments. They give us propolis to help with colds and allergies. And more than anything, they pollinate our plants, gardens, and orchards. We couldn’t do what we do without bees.

And it’s not just honeybees. There are other pollinators like carpenter bees and bumblebees.

If you’re on the herbalism journey on your homestead, you may be wondering how in the world we can help pollinators herbally. From planting herbs that attract pollinators and enhance honey flavor, to using herbal cleaners in our bee hives, we can absolutely utilize herbs for bees in our homestead apiaries. Here’s how…

Herbs for Honey Bees

We can start by attracting pollinators and offering attractant herbs to our bee hives. Planting herbs is one of the many easy ways we can protect fragile bee populations on our homesteads.

There are a lot of different herbs that will attract pollinators to your homestead. And if you already have beehives, planting these herbs will help ensure that your bees have enough to forage during the warm months. 

The great news is many of these herbs would make a wonderful addition to your medicinal herb garden!

Herbs That Attract Pollinators

• Lemon Balm
• Chives
• Rosemary
• Borage
• Lavender
• Sage
• Comfrey
• Thyme
• Echinacea
• Feverfew
• Yarrow
• Dandelion
• Oregano
• Savory
• Mint
• Rosemary
• Chamomile
• Red Clover
• Motherwort
• Marjoram
• Catnip
• Hyssop
• Bee Balm

Preparing and Cleaning Your Hive Boxes

When preparing to take on a new hive, or just generally cleaning out your boxes from an old hive, there are a few herbs for bees you can use to promote general health and keep pests, like ants, away from the hive.

Wash down the hive with the herbal solution recipe below, then rub down the inside of the hive with sprigs of rosemary, thyme, catnip, and mint. You can even lay these herbs on the inside top cover of your hive to deter insect pests.

Clean Your Bee Hive With Herbs

Use this cleaner to clean out a new bee hive before adding your bees.

Using Herbs for Bees in New or Weak Hives

When taking on a new hive that could be stressed, or when dealing with a weak bee hive, offering your bees an herbal tea will help boost energy and general health. This is also a great tea to give during harsh weather (drought or excessive rain), or before the winter months set in.

Herbal Bee Tea

The herbs in this bee tea solution offer so many benefits and good food for your bees. It’s a mixture that can be kept on hand (dried) and made up quickly when needed to stimulate the bees’ immune systems and metabolism. To strengthen a weak, new, or swarm hive, offer it to your bees every day for 1–2 weeks. If the bees don’t take the tea, stop offering it. It means they have enough to forage or simply aren’t interested or in need.

Encouraging Herbal Foraging

It’s hard to think that we could spend time and money on our bee hives, only to have them killed off because a neighbor or local industrial farm has sprayed chemicals on their property. For this reason, we need to encourage our bees to forage on our homestead. This is accomplished by planting various herbs, vegetables, and flowers right around the hives themselves. This is why many homesteaders and farmers place their hives directly in their gardens—not only because it helps the homesteader pollinate their garden, but because it helps the bees stay close to home.

Choose herbs for bees from the list mentioned in this section to encourage them to stay close by. If given enough plants, they will forage around home first. This also helps to ensure a healthy hive by offering plenty of plants during the spring and summer. Plant perennials (like echinacea, lemon balm, yarrow, and sage) that come back bigger and stronger each year so that your pollinators can get started as soon as possible each spring.

Herbal Honey Enhancers

Try planting these herbs nearby to enhance honey color and flavor:

• Anise-hyssop (Agastache foeniculum)—Bees feast on hyssop and it can be one of the top nectar producers for bees.
• Red Clover (Trifolium pratense)—Produces a white to amber honey, enhances overall bee health.
• Marjoram (Origanum vulgare)—Gives honey an aromatic scent and flavor.
• Motherwort (Leonurus cardiaca)—Gives honey a minty fresh flavor.
• Thyme (Thymus vulgaris)—Offers a slight herbal taste and honey of a dark amber color.

All in all, bees and herbs go hand in hand. Herbs are so aromatic and delicious, and bees think so too! Not only can they help you, the homesteader, but they can also help the original homestead herbalists—the bees!

You can learn more about herbalism in my book, The Homesteader’s Herbal Companion, where I talk about growing, harvesting, preserving, and using herbs on your homestead, in your home, and for your family and livestock.

photo credits:
photo 1, 3 4, & 6— Kaylee Richardson of The Farm on Quail Hollow
photo 5— Carina Richard-Wheat of The Rustic Mod

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Homestead Honeybees

Keep reading for even more information that you may find useful as a beginner beekeeper!

• Easy Ways to Protect Bees
• Beginner Beekeeper Tips
• Raising Bees with Children
• Different Colors of Honey
• Preparing Bees for Winter