August Forage plants

[AdamD]

For my bees August is usually a time where there are lots of bees and little forage available to them. What would be good to plant - either as garden plants or larger scale field/hedgerow plants to give some additional food before the ivy comes to the rescue?

[Nigel Pringle]

Tetradium daniellii
bee-bee tree
Late summer flowering and I think the name tells you which insects it is very popular with.
I've just bought some seeds...but it's a 5-6-year project to flowering
However, if you're into planting English native species...it's Korean.

[Patrick]

As mentioned elsewhere, we have an Abelia grandiflora in the garden and bees (both honey and bumbles) love it and it flowers profusely from mid summer into late autumn. Makes a dense bush, easy to prune and no effort to manage.

On the Welsh coast I have seen bushes of Escallonia absolutely mobbed by bees well into Autumn.

[DianeBees]

http://www.sheffieldbeekeepers.org.uk/t ... len-chart/

Looking at the pollen chart with just autumn on, there's some suggestions.
I've got borage still flowering in my garden, the privet did very little this year. We have a huge hedge near us that flowered very briefly. Usually it's out for weeks.

There's balsam flowering somewhere near but I would never suggest encouraging that. It's all along the M61 on one stretch.