Most Attractive To Bumblebees?

bower · November 21, 2017

Gorgeous flowers! Very interesting to read that there is nectar as well in some of the wild species. That would make a big difference to attracting bumblebees early in the season, since the queens want nectar as well as pollen.

Joseph, I mentioned it in another thread which you may have missed, I've been growing more tomatoes outdoors and watching bee beehavior. Before the first brood of workers has hatched, there are just a few bumblebee queens in the garden, and they were not happy to see the big display of tomato flowers. They'd get close enough just to realize this is no good, and then fly off in a hurry. They need nectar to keep their own energy up, and tomato flowers only offer pollen, so they would leave them untouched. I will add that there are not a huge number of flowers available early season, and the queens are working everything suitable for all it is worth. So I can only assume it is the lack of nectar causing them to bypass tomatoes.

Once the workers have hatched, it was a different situation. Their top priority afaik is to collect pollen to feed the next brood. Worker bees would visit the tomato row every day, and as I watched, they visited every newly open flower to get the goodies, and bypassed only the flowers that had already been visited. They seem able to tell at a glance flying by and inspecting, which flowers are new. They didn't show any preference for one variety over another, regardless of flower size or other characteristics. All they cared about was fresh abundant pollen.

November 21, 2017	#38
bower Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Feb 2012 Location: Newfoundland, Canada Posts: 6,794	Gorgeous flowers! Very interesting to read that there is nectar as well in some of the wild species. That would make a big difference to attracting bumblebees early in the season, since the queens want nectar as well as pollen. Joseph, I mentioned it in another thread which you may have missed, I've been growing more tomatoes outdoors and watching bee beehavior. Before the first brood of workers has hatched, there are just a few bumblebee queens in the garden, and they were not happy to see the big display of tomato flowers. They'd get close enough just to realize this is no good, and then fly off in a hurry. They need nectar to keep their own energy up, and tomato flowers only offer pollen, so they would leave them untouched. I will add that there are not a huge number of flowers available early season, and the queens are working everything suitable for all it is worth. So I can only assume it is the lack of nectar causing them to bypass tomatoes. Once the workers have hatched, it was a different situation. Their top priority afaik is to collect pollen to feed the next brood. Worker bees would visit the tomato row every day, and as I watched, they visited every newly open flower to get the goodies, and bypassed only the flowers that had already been visited. They seem able to tell at a glance flying by and inspecting, which flowers are new. They didn't show any preference for one variety over another, regardless of flower size or other characteristics. All they cared about was fresh abundant pollen.