Hello BeeKeepers-



Yes there was very little response to my request for bee flower
references, not too much of a surprise as I had already spent quite some
time looking around the

'net before I posted my request- and had been unsuccessful in finding an
organized summary of preferred bee flowers.  There are a lot of
anecdotal flower discussions and small summaries tho, and since I was
trying to find info for a short lecture on the subject, I went to the
effort of making a list of flowers mentioned anywhere as bee-ing
attractive to bees, and then looked for common plant families.  This is
what I found:





Plant families with many species of interest to bees, or dependent on
bees for pollination:



Rosaceae (apple, peach, berries etc.)

Fabaceae (legumes)

Liliaceae (lilies, onion etc.)

Brassicaceae (mustards)

Asteraceae (sunflowers & relatives)

Apiaceae (umbelliferae- dill, caraway etc.)

Curbitaceae (melons and squashes)





Plant families with several species favored by bees:



Ericaceae (heathers, blueberry, cranberry)

Lamiaceae (mints)

Solonaceae (potato, tomato, pepper)

Malvaceae (cotton, okra)

Lauraceae (avocado, spicebush)





My lecture is happily in the past, but if anyone has any additions to
this list I would very much enjoy receiving them-



Thanks

Inger Lamb