6 Best Wildflower Seeds For Attracting Honeybees That Bloom All Season
Support honeybees with a lasting food source. Discover 6 key wildflower seeds that bloom all season, providing a continuous supply of vital nectar and pollen.
Keeping bees teaches you to see the landscape in a new way, not as a collection of plants, but as a calendar of food. A successful hive isn’t just about a strong summer honey flow; it’s about providing a steady, reliable pantry from the last frost of spring to the first hard freeze of fall. Your goal is to fill the gaps, ensuring your bees are never more than a short flight from their next meal.
Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate, this site earns from qualifying purchases. Thank you!
Why Continuous Blooms Matter for Honeybees
The most dangerous time for a honeybee colony isn’t always the dead of winter. It’s often the "summer dearth," that hot, dry period in July or August when the spring explosion of clover and dandelions has faded, but the fall asters haven’t yet bloomed. During this gap, a hive can quickly consume its honey stores, brood production can plummet, and the colony’s health can spiral downwards, leaving it too weak to survive the coming winter.
A continuous sequence of blooms is the single best insurance policy you can provide for your hives. It’s not about planting one massive field that flowers for three weeks. It’s about creating a layered mosaic of different plants with overlapping bloom times. This ensures a consistent source of both nectar (for energy) and pollen (for protein and raising young), which is the foundation of a resilient, productive, and healthy honeybee colony.
American Meadows Bee the Change Wildflower Mix
Seed mixes are the easiest entry point for establishing a pollinator plot, and the American Meadows mix is a popular, reliable choice. It’s designed for broad appeal, containing a mix of annuals for fast, first-year color and perennials that will establish for the long haul. This is your "set it and forget it" option if you have a patch of ground you want to convert quickly with minimal planning.
The main tradeoff with any national, one-size-fits-all mix is that it won’t be perfectly optimized for your specific soil and climate. Some species will thrive while others may struggle. Think of it as a great starting point. Observe what does well in the first two years, and then you can overseed with more of the successful species or add specific plants to fill any bloom gaps you notice.
Eden Brothers Honey Bee Wildflower Seed Mix
The Eden Brothers mix is another excellent, well-regarded option that serves a similar purpose. When comparing general mixes like this one and American Meadows, the key is to look at the actual species list on the back of the bag. You’re looking for diversity in bloom time and flower shape to appeal to a wide range of pollinators, not just honeybees.
This mix often includes a solid balance of perennials like Echinacea (Coneflower) and annuals like Cosmos and Poppies. The real value of a curated mix is that someone else has already done the work of balancing these elements. The critical factor for success is site preparation. No seed mix, no matter how good, will outcompete a field of established weeds. You must clear the ground properly for these seeds to have a fighting chance.
Borage (Borago officinalis): A Bee Magnet
If you could only plant one thing for honeybees, borage would be a serious contender. It grows incredibly fast, blooms profusely with brilliant blue, star-shaped flowers, and refills with nectar so quickly that bees will visit the same flower multiple times a day. It’s an annual that acts like a perennial, as it self-seeds so aggressively that you’ll likely never have to plant it again after the first year.
The downside is that same aggressive self-seeding. Borage is not a plant for a tidy, formal bed; it’s a workhorse for a wilder corner of your property or near the vegetable garden where its vigor is an asset. It will pop up in compost piles, pathways, and garden rows. For a hobby farmer, this can be a feature, not a bug—a resilient, self-sustaining source of bee forage that requires zero effort after the initial planting.
White Dutch Clover: A Hardy Groundcover Choice
White Dutch Clover is the unsung hero of bee forage. It’s not as showy as a poppy or a zinnia, but its value lies in its persistence and utility. It’s a low-growing, nitrogen-fixing legume that thrives in poor soil and can handle foot traffic, making it a perfect choice for seeding into pathways, orchard floors, or even creating a "bee lawn" that you mow high.
While a single clover blossom doesn’t offer a huge nectar reward, a dense stand of it creates a massive, long-lasting nectar flow from late spring into summer. It’s a foundational food source. Its main tradeoff is its reputation; some people see it as a lawn weed. But from a practical farming perspective, it’s a multi-purpose plant that feeds your soil, chokes out less desirable weeds, and provides a crucial bridge of food for your bees.
Outsidepride Save the Bees Wildflower Seed Mix
Attract bees and beautify your space with this mix of 19 non-GMO annual and perennial wildflower seeds. Each packet contains 80,000+ seeds covering approximately 250 sq ft and includes varieties like Butterfly Milkweed, Cosmos, and Coneflower.
This is another great mix, often notable for including a strong component of native species. Planting natives is a fantastic strategy because they are, by definition, perfectly adapted to your climate and soil, and they support native pollinators in addition to your honeybees. A mix heavy in native perennials represents a long-term investment in your property’s ecosystem.
The key thing to understand is the timeline. An annual-heavy mix gives you a riot of color in the first year. A perennial-heavy native mix might look sparse and weedy in year one, as the plants focus on root development. Patience is required. By year three, however, you’ll have a resilient, low-maintenance meadow that comes back stronger every season, providing reliable forage with far less work.
New England Aster: Essential Late-Season Forage
As the days shorten and other flowers fade, New England Aster explodes into a mass of purple flowers. This isn’t just a pretty fall plant; it’s a critical survival resource for honeybees. The nectar and pollen gathered from asters and goldenrods in September and October are what the bees use to raise the final generation of "winter bees" and top off their honey stores for the cold months ahead.
Planting a dedicated patch of asters is one of the most impactful things you can do for your hives’ winter survival. They are hardy, vigorous perennials that form a dense clump over time. Their only real drawback is their height—they can grow 5-6 feet tall and may need staking or support to prevent flopping over after a heavy rain. Plant them at the back of a border or in a dedicated patch where their untidy late-season appearance won’t be an issue.
Planting Strategies for All-Season Bee Forage
Success isn’t about finding one magic seed; it’s about building a system. Think in terms of layers and locations. Don’t just dedicate one "wildflower plot." Instead, integrate bee forage throughout your property to create a robust and resilient landscape.
A practical approach involves a few key tactics:
- The Meadow Plot: Use a high-quality mix (like the ones mentioned) for a larger area. This is your foundation. Prepare the soil well, and be patient, especially if it’s heavy on perennials.
- The Powerhouse Patch: Dedicate a smaller, easily accessible bed near your garden to a high-performance annual like Borage. This provides a concentrated, high-value resource.
- The Living Mulch: Seed White Dutch Clover in your orchard, on pathways, or in fallow garden beds. This is your functional, low-maintenance forage that also improves soil health.
- The Fall Fuel Station: Ensure you have a dedicated stand of late-blooming perennials like New England Aster or Goldenrod. This is non-negotiable for ensuring your bees are well-fed going into winter.
By combining these strategies, you move from simply planting flowers to actively managing a forage calendar. You create redundancy in their food supply, which is the key to helping your bees thrive through the inevitable challenges of drought, strange weather, and other seasonal uncertainties.
Ultimately, creating a bee-friendly landscape is an act of observation. Pay attention to what’s blooming and when. Notice the gaps, and then choose the right plant to fill that specific window. This thoughtful approach will do more for your bees than any single bag of seed ever could.
