[Louisa]

Hello, this is all new to me, but I have a question, in general and in particular for French members
(pour les méridionaux!) 

Last year I found that Stachys lanata attracted numerous insects, so much so that I left the flower stocks a long time even though it gets messy, and this winter I planted a slope a bit out of the way so that it could be left as long as necessary. And this year there seems to be nobody on it!  This year we have a lot more bees generally, including all the bumblebees and carpenter bees, (although almost no wasps or hornets).  I've tried looking at different times of day, I see only a few stinkbugs... I wondered if it might have something to do with what else is flowering at the same time, and a lot of things are early this year (the stachys is certainly earlier)  but there is also perovskia, clary sage... does anyone know anything about this?

I find I am gardening more and more with insects in mind and so many books are only about identification, not about habits. I would welcome more information,
thanks in advance,

Louisa

[Alisdair]

Louisa has put her finger on something that has been baffling me, too. In our Sussex garden we have some plants in particular positions which always seem to attract more bees or butterflies than other examples of exactly the same plants in other parts of the garden. For instance, an Origanum vulgare by a sunny flight of steps, which usually seems to attract far more happy guzzlers than others in just as sunny spots elsewhere.
But!
This year there's virtually nothing on it, though it's flowering well at the moment. As far as the bees are concerned, an oak tree not far away is throbbing with the sound of hundreds of them, so I expect they've just got something more attractive there. With the butterflies, the ones we get most are meadow browns, which I don't think live for very long, so perhaps it's just that there hasn't been a flush of emerging butterflies at exactly the right moment.
Certainly this year we have had completely different flowering times, most earlier, a few later, as a result of a warm spring much drier than usual. Bumble bees were out and about in great numbers earlier than usual, butterflies generally seem rather later.

[JTh]

Halkidiki is full of honey bees, and I enjoy watching them in the spring when they are visiting a large sage near the entrance to our house. We have observed that the honey bees  normally come first, then the bumble bees take over after a while. The last ones are too big for the 'normal entrance' to the nectar, so they pierce the flowers from the outside to get access and then the flowers are no longer of interest to the honey bees. This year, however, there were only bumble bees here, although there are pleny of bee hives in the vicinity.

[Umbrian]

We installed 3 hives in our extended garden area last year (newly planted olive grove) and have found that the bees love our large areas of naturalised Gaura lindheimeri.

[hilberry]

The honey bees in my garden make quite a long flight to get here.  The nearest hives are across a small forest about 3 kilometers away!  They love my winter savory [sariette].

[JTh]

I used to keep bees, they are fascinating creatures. Three kilometers is not such a great distance, honey bees will forage
up to 12 kilometers or more from the hive (see http://www.lasi.group.shef.ac.uk/pdf/rbeeimpr2000.pdf)! Of course, if they find  food closer to their hives, they normally don't travel that  far.

[JTh]

The other day we heard some very intense buzzing, but it took a while before we discovered that it was not coming from the heather which has just started to bloom, but from some large wild asparagus plants, I believe they are A. acutifolius. In most books it says that they  are flowering in spring: February- March (Lafranchis & Sfikas), or April-June (Grey-Wilson & Blamey), but I believe the time given in Wild Flowers of Greece by  Vangelis Papiomitoglu (Mediterraneo editions 2006) is more correct here, it says June-October.  I have never seen these flowers before, but they were obviously very popular with the bees. There were thousands of them and they seemed to be more eager than I have ever seen them on the heather, which there is plenty of in Halkidiki, in a week or two all the hills around us will be mauve. Honey is an important produce in Halkidiki, there are beehives everywhere.

[Alisdair]

Lovely picture of that bee, Jorun! Thanks!