A new study has found that bees are most attracted to lavender and majoram – excellent news considering we have a lot of lavender on our central LSE roofs for the Connaught House bees!
The study (full write-up here) was also summarised in an article in The Guardian online, which explains that:
“Scientists at the University of Sussex repeatedly counted flower-visiting insects that foraged on 32 popular summer flowering garden plant varieties, in a specially planted experimental garden on the campus. In the second and final year of study, additional gardens were set up to check the results.
Bees accounted for 85% of the visitors to the garden. Bumblebees were the most frequent visitors, followed by honeybees and a few solitary bees.
Highly bred varieties of lavender, including grosso, hidcote giant and gros blue were the most attractive to bumblebees, along with large single-flowered dahlias. Honeybees made a beeline for the blue borage flowers, and marjoram, a popular herb with small pinkish white flowers, was the best all-rounder, popular with honeybees, bumblebees and other bees, as well as hover flies, which accounted for 9% of the visitors, and butterflies and moths, just 2%.”
LSE Bees 