More photos

Apis mellifera

Honey bees are the principal managed pollinator of orchard apples; because the cultivated apple is self-incompatible (Missouri Botanical Garden PlantFinder), bee transfer of pollen between two different cultivars is what sets the crop.

The May to June bloom is a broad flat mass of small open flowers with nectar and pollen freely accessible, and honey bees work it steadily. It is not a specialist relationship in either direction; it is a large, easy, well-timed resource at the point in the season when colonies are building. Missouri Botanical Garden lists butterflies alongside birds under what the plant attracts.

Gallberry honey is a named, commercially recognised single-source honey across the Southeast, produced from inkberry bloom - one of the few garden shrubs with a honey type to its name. The May-to-June flowers are worked hard despite being visually insignificant.

The dull white May flowers are visually insignificant and heavily worked by bees, which do the actual pollination transfer between the male and female plants. No bee visit, no winter berries - on a dioecious shrub the pollinator is not a bonus, it is the mechanism.

The May to June cymes are open, flat and shallow, which makes the nectar available to essentially every generalist visitor, and honey bees work them steadily through a bloom that is short and heavy rather than long and thin. Every blue drupe in August traces back to those few weeks.

The European honey bee is the most commonly used managed pollinator for watermelon; Missouri Botanical Garden notes bees are needed for cross-pollination and that female flowers will not set fruit without insect visits.

Honey bees are the principal managed pollinator of orchard apples; because the cultivated apple is self-incompatible (Missouri Botanical Garden PlantFinder), bee transfer of pollen between two different cultivars is what sets the crop.

Commercial sunflower-seed production relies on honeybee pollination at scale; sunflower honey is a recognized regional product.

The May to June bloom is a broad flat mass of small open flowers with nectar and pollen freely accessible, and honey bees work it steadily. It is not a specialist relationship in either direction; it is a large, easy, well-timed resource at the point in the season when colonies are building. Missouri Botanical Garden lists butterflies alongside birds under what the plant attracts.

Gallberry honey is a named, commercially recognised single-source honey across the Southeast, produced from inkberry bloom - one of the few garden shrubs with a honey type to its name. The May-to-June flowers are worked hard despite being visually insignificant.

The dull white May flowers are visually insignificant and heavily worked by bees, which do the actual pollination transfer between the male and female plants. No bee visit, no winter berries - on a dioecious shrub the pollinator is not a bonus, it is the mechanism.

The May to June cymes are open, flat and shallow, which makes the nectar available to essentially every generalist visitor, and honey bees work them steadily through a bloom that is short and heavy rather than long and thin. Every blue drupe in August traces back to those few weeks.

The European honey bee is the most commonly used managed pollinator for watermelon; Missouri Botanical Garden notes bees are needed for cross-pollination and that female flowers will not set fruit without insect visits.

The April to May bloom is fragrant and worked hard by honey bees despite being visually insignificant, and yaupon is a recognised nectar source across the Gulf South. Every berry in the winter display traces back to this three-week window.

Honeybees work the nectar-rich blue and white umbels through summer.

Honey bees work the open single and semi-double heads of this Asteraceae annual for nectar and pollen through the long summer-to-frost bloom; access is reduced in the densest fully double cultivars.

Honey bees and other early foragers visit the fragrant late-winter to early-spring flowers when little else is in bloom.

The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center flags Tilia americana as having special value to honey bees; basswood is a noted nectar (honey) source, and Missouri Botanical Garden lists the fragrant June flowers as attracting bees.

Honeybees also visit the modest pink-lilac summer flowers for nectar (Missouri Botanical Garden notes the flowers as a nectar source), a minor forage compared with the plant fall fruit value.

Honeybees also visit the flowers for nectar over the long midsummer bloom; this is generalist foraging on a good mint-family nectar plant, graded plausible rather than documented.

The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center flags American persimmon as having Special Value to Honey Bees, which visit the small urn-shaped flowers for nectar.

The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center lists the fragrant early-spring flowers as having special value to honey bees.

Amur maple's fragrant greenish-yellow spring flowers are a noted early-season draw for honeybees, offering nectar and pollen before most trees bloom; the scent that is unusual for a maple is part of what attracts them.

Honey bees may opportunistically visit the open trumpets for nectar by day, but the flower is built for night-flying hawkmoths rather than bees.

Listed by the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center as having special value to honey bees - a strong nectar plant whose common alternate name "anise hyssop" reflects its long use as a bee forage.

The fragrant early-spring flowers offer nectar and pollen to honey bees and other early-season foragers; bee visitation improves apricot fruit set.

Honeybees forage the open, accessible flowers in early spring when colony foraging resumes and few other nectar sources are available.

Honeybees visit Aubrieta flowers regularly in early spring when few other nectar sources are available; the open four-petalled Brassicaceae flowers are easily accessible.

Honey bees visit Colchicum autumnale flowers in autumn when few other nectar sources remain; the open goblet flowers are accessible to short-tongued visitors.

The NC State Extension Gardener Plant Toolbox lists the flowers as attractive to bees and states they provide a fall nectar source - valuable when little else is blooming.

Avocado bears perfect greenish-yellow flowers in panicles (Missouri Botanical Garden PlantFinder); honey bees are the principal managed pollinator of commercial avocado orchards, where the dichogamous bloom relies on insect movement between flowers in opposite stages. Listed as plausible because the MBG species page documents the flowers but not the specific bee visitors.

Honey bees work the long-blooming two-lipped flowers heavily for nectar; in temperate gardens, where its native hummingbird pollinators are absent, baby sage is a prized and well-documented nectar source over an exceptionally long season.

Honey bees visit the open, accessible star-shaped flowers for nectar during the mid- to late-summer bloom period.

Honey bees visit the small, largely self-pollinating flowers for nectar, though the crop sets its underground seed without depending on them.

Epimedium flowers are visited by bees in spring; PFAF notes pollination by bees, and honeybees are among the documented visitors in temperate gardens where the species is grown.

Honeybee is a capable visitor to Acanthus flowers; while smaller than the primary bumblebee pollinators, it can access nectar from mature or partially open florets.

The large fragrant flowers with a nectar guide (the beard) are visited by bees for nectar; this is a general pollination-ecology inference rather than a documented species record on the cited horticultural sources.

The large flat-topped cymes of small open flowers are worked by bees and other generalist insects for pollen and nectar; Missouri Botanical Garden lists the flowers as attracting butterflies. Mapped to a generalist pollinator pending a species-level record.

Honeybees may collect pollen from male strobili in autumn, though this is a wind-pollinated species and bee visitation is incidental rather than the primary pollination mechanism.

Honey bees visit blackthorn flowers heavily in early spring for both pollen and nectar; the mass-flowering habit makes it a significant spring forage plant wherever it grows.

Honey bees are well-documented visitors of Felicia amelloides, working the open disc florets for both pollen and nectar - the accessible composite flower structure makes it a reliable foraging plant wherever both species occur.

Male pollen cones release wind-borne pollen in spring; honeybees and other generalist bees may forage pollen opportunistically, though wind pollination is primary and pollen quantity reaching bees is incidental.

Honeybees will also gather the plentiful pollen where colonies are in bloom, though this nectarless native is primarily worked by native bees and flies; scored plausible rather than documented for this species specifically.

A wind-pollinated conifer; honeybees and other generalist bees may occasionally gather pollen from the male cones, but China fir is not a meaningful nectar or pollen source compared with flowering trees.

Honey bees may forage pollen from male flower clusters in spring; Anacardiaceae flowers offer limited nectar and wind is the primary pollination vector, so bee visitation is incidental.

Honey bees visit the small spice-scented flowers for pollen in early spring when few other sources are available.

NC State lists the plant as bee-attracting; honey bees are among the generalist bees that visit clematis flowers for pollen.

Hawthorn blossom is a major early-season pollen and nectar source for honeybees; the heavy May flowering coincides with peak colony expansion and is a valued forage tree throughout Europe.

Hazel catkins provide some of the earliest pollen of the year; bees gather it in late winter, though the wind-pollinated pollen is dry and harder to collect than that of insect-pollinated flowers (NC State; Woodland Trust).

Honey bees work the open soft-yellow flowers for pollen, which the blooms offer in preference to copious nectar.

Olive is primarily wind-pollinated and offers no nectar, but its abundant summer pollen is foraged by honey bees. Honey bees are an introduced (non-native) species, the same Old-World/Mediterranean origin as the olive itself; native North American pollinators are not documented associates of this exotic tree.

Honey bees work the open scarlet flowers for pollen - the bloom offers abundant pollen but little nectar, so foragers gather at the dark central boss of stamens through the early-summer flush.

Snowdrops also offer early pollen, valued by honeybees building up the colony at the end of winter.

The open, shallow daisy-like flowers are readily worked by honey bees for pollen and nectar; NC State Extension flags the species broadly as bee-friendly.

The showy summer panicles (Missouri Botanical Garden PlantFinder describes the flowers as "Showy") offer pollen to honey bees and other generalist foragers during a long July-September bloom; this is a plausible generalist forage relationship rather than a documented specialist association.

Honey bees work the large exposed anthers for pollen by day. They are collecting pollen rather than nectar, which sits too deep in the tube for them, so a garden planting reads as a pollen source and not a nectar one. This is also why removing the anthers indoors costs the plant nothing a gardener values: outdoors those anthers are the part insects actually use.

Honeybees forage Bergenia flowers for pollen during mild early-spring days; the plant is noted as a valuable early-season pollen source in UK and European horticulture.

Honeybees collect pollen from the male catkins; oak also produces small amounts of aphid-derived honeydew that bees gather in summer. Beyond bees, Quercus robur supports an exceptionally rich European invertebrate fauna - including the larvae of many moths and numerous leaf-mining and gall-forming species - best described in prose, as the catalog's butterfly/moth wildlife slugs are North-America-centric.

Honey bees and other flying insects visit male yew cones for pollen in late winter/early spring when little else is in bloom; wind is the primary pollination vector but insects may transfer pollen incidentally.

Honey bees do not forage the wind-pollinated catkins for nectar, but a dense hornbeam hedge gives shelter and a windbreak to foraging insects moving between flower sources.

Plotwright. (n.d.). European honeybee (Apis mellifera). Retrieved 2026, August 20, from https://plotwright.com/wildlife/apis-mellifera