Attracting Bees to Fruit Blossom with Companion Planting

Why Pollination Is the Cheapest Crop You'll Ever Grow

A mature apple tree can carry thousands of blossoms and set only a fraction of them — and that fraction is decided in a handful of days. One good pollinator visit is usually all a flower needs, but the visits have to be numerous and well timed.

Most top fruit is also self-incompatible to some degree. Apples and pears generally need a compatible partner flowering at the same time; plums and cherries vary. Pollen must move between trees, not just between flowers, and the insects doing the moving are working to a tight schedule. With a little planning you can multiply the pollinators working your orchard without buying or managing a single hive.

The Hungry Gap: Getting Bees There When Blossom Opens

British orchards have an awkward truth to contend with. Apple and pear blossom arrives in April and early May, often in cold, wet weather, at the end of the leanest foraging period of the year. Honeybees won't fly much below 10°C. Red mason bees emerge earlier and will work in dull, cool conditions — one bee can visit hundreds of flowers a day — but nesting sites are scarce in tidy gardens.

Queen bumblebees, fresh from hibernation, are your most valuable early workers: big, hairy, cold-tolerant and willing to fly when honeybees stay put. What they need in March and April is fuel, within a few hundred metres of the trees. That's the gap companion planting fills.

Three Companion Plants That Earn Their Space

All three of these are cheap, easy from seed and generous with nectar. Sow in blocks or strips rather than scattered singles — bees find patches, not individual plants.

• Borage (Borago officinalis) — hardy annual to about 60–90cm and famous for refilling its nectar quickly, so flowers keep rewarding repeat visits. Sow direct April to June, or late August for plants that overwinter and flower next spring. Scatter 5–10 seeds per metre, thin to 30cm, and let a few self-seed.
• Phacelia (Phacelia tanacetifolia) — the best-value annual for pollinators in most British gardens. Broadcast 1–2g per square metre from April to July; it flowers six to eight weeks later and holds its lavender-blue curls for four to six weeks. Make two or three sowings three weeks apart so something is open before, during and after blossom.
• Calendula (Calendula officinalis) — pot marigold, hardy and forgiving. Sow March to May, or September for early flowers the following year. Its flat, open blooms suit short-tongued bees, and regular deadheading keeps it going until the frosts.

Chives, comfrey, lavender and white clover are all worth adding. Leave the dandelions and clover in the grass to flower, too.

Planting Schemes Under and Around the Trees

Think about distance. Most small bees forage within 200–300 metres of home, and they take the shortest route between a good patch and the nest. Put the planting where the bees already are, not in a far corner.

• A 60–90cm strip of phacelia or borage along the sunny side of each row, or in the alley between rows.
• Calendula or borage in a planter at the end of each row — somewhere to rest your secateurs, too.
• White clover in the mown alleys, left uncut while blossom is open.
• Early willow, blackthorn or flowering currant nearby, to bridge the weeks before the fruit comes in.

Keep a metre-wide mulch ring around young trees and sow your companions just beyond the drip line, where they won't compete for water.

Sprays, Timing and the Things That Undo Your Work

Do not spray anything while blossom is open. That includes insecticides, fungicides and the so-called organic options: pyrethrum is broad-spectrum and kills bees as efficiently as anything with a hazard warning on the bottle. Sulphur and lime sulphur have no place on open flowers either.

If you must treat, do it before the buds open or after petal fall, and spray in the evening when bees have stopped flying. Never spray a flowering understorey of clover or dandelion — it's the same mistake in a different place. Mow less, provide shallow water in dry spells, and leave some bare, sunny soil for ground-nesting solitary bees.

Cedar Craft: Bee Hotels and Plant Supports That Last

Companion planting brings the bees in; nesting sites keep them. Red mason bees readily use drilled timber blocks, and cedar earns its keep here. It's naturally durable and needs no chemical treatment, which matters when you're inviting insects to live in it.

Drill holes 8–10mm across and 100–150mm deep, with clean entrances, spaced about 15mm apart. Face the block south or south-east to catch morning sun and mount it at 1.5–2m, sheltered from driving rain. Replace the block every couple of years to limit mites and mould. The same timber makes planters, obelisks and tree ties that outlast softwood several times over — fewer jobs, and less disturbance around the roots.