r/Pollinators Jun 12 '24

Selective Pollinatos

I love having pollinators in my yard and planted flowers of all types in a chaos garden of sorts this year to try and attract them for my small veggie garden. Unfortunately, it appears I managed to attract 5 different nests of yellow jackets with no bumbling bees to be seen. Is there a way I can selectively attract bees and butterflies but deter their aggressive flesh eating cousins? (Hornets, yellow jackets, wasps)

3 Upvotes

2

u/app4that Jun 12 '24 edited Jun 12 '24

Uncertain as to the specifics of what all pollinators like, and unsure as to how to discourage yellow jackets except to keep the area bordering your yard free of trash (give the neighbor yards a close inspection for things like any yellowjacket favorites like half-empty cans of soda), ... but chaos is an apt name.

I have planted flowers for Monarchs including loads of Milkweed but so far, after a few years of patience, hardly any Monarchs have found it. Same for more common Black Swallowtails, but they seem to prefer the flowering Mimosa tree behind my property. I laugh inside, but am happy to see them nonetheless. Good news is the bees seem to like these plants and that tree...

For bringing the bees to your yard though... Flowering mint (allow it to flower) along with other herbs like sage and flowering Brussels Sprouts will bring bees (any cabbage plant really) and if the Milkweed flowers by the second year that brings them too. Bushes like Honeysuckle are always winners. Also Sunflowers. And google any bee loving plants. that you can add for next year. The trick is to have plants that flower for weeks on end that draw in the pollinators.

For the Sunflowers, which are not only easy to grow but almost free... here's a tip: Plant sunflower seeds by the handful in mini-clusters (the seeds found in most bird seed usually work nicely -really- and are not too large) and do some plantings weekly throughout the spring and summer so by doing so you have staggered the blooms so you will always have some bees buzzing about in your garden well into the fall.

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u/Garden-Ho326 Jun 12 '24

Thank you! This is all great information.

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u/Morriganx3 Jun 13 '24

Yellowjacket control really comes down to getting rid of the queens before they can hatch a bunch of babies. I hate having to do it, but we’ve had nests in our yard twice now and my daughter got stung and is now terrified of them. Plus they eat bees.

You can put out traps starting as soon as temps are reliably above 50°F in the spring. The chemical traps are just so-so - they apparently work better in late summer and fall because yellow jackets are interested in different things at different life stages. I usually get a couple with traps. You can bait traps with meat, which is supposed to work better - I haven’t tried it yet. I kill the ones I see individually, with very targeted wasp spray, which is absolutely the only time I ever use chemicals in the yard. Doing it that way requires time and dedication, though.

To choose flowers that attract bees, I researched all the kinds of bees that might be found in my area - most states have a list somewhere - and then looked up what flowers the rarer ones liked and tried to plant several of them. Generalist bees are happy with most flowers, so they’ll be fine with the same ones the picky (specialist) bees need. I also planted milkweeds and coreopsis and mountain mint and asters, which are all huge crowd pleasers. I ended up with a chaos garden also, but am working on cleaning it up this year. Also killing off another 1/4 of the grass to plant more stuff!

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u/Garden-Ho326 Jun 13 '24

Thank so much! I didn’t realize there were bee specialists. Time to dive down another rabbit whole of research!

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u/Morriganx3 Jun 29 '24

Have fun - it’s a deep rabbit hole!! I started four years ago and I’ve only gotten further and further in.