[JustinH]

Since the honey bee practices "flower fidelity", or visiting only one flower type per forage trip, what is the very minimum square foot area of one flower type that we should plant as backyard hobbyist? I'm a newbie with 3 hives and I bought hundreds of dollars of various annuals and perennials (all honey bee favs that produce lots of pollen and/or nectar) but my bees completely ignore them. My attempt to give them as many nutritional sources as possible has backfired because they don't have enough of them same flower to make it worth visiting. Instead of 25 different flowers, I should have planted lots of just 3 or 4 different types. Do you guys notice this too?

 

[tabby]

For what it's worth I've seen individual bees go from one type of flower to another. It's made really obvious when you see a bee covered in sticky hibiscus pollen on a gloriosa daisy.
And I've seen them ignore a flower that they are known to like, even if there are thousands of them, if there's something they like better near by.

 

[jbraun]

I started keeping bees because I'm a gardener. I wanted them to pollinate my yard first. Darned if most of them don't don't fly straight up and away. Well I guess some of them must fly around the house to get some of my fruits and flowers.

The bees seem to do OK with their work but it's on their schedule and not mine.

 

[JWChesnut]

Occasionally, I dab a forager bee with a dot of queen marking paint, and time the return to a feeding station (unbelievably quick, if you are interested). The same marked bee will move onto other nearby forage sources.

If you are not seeing bees at your garden, it is because they are foraging on wild trees (Locust?) and won't move down into the garden until the wild flow peters out. When they are hungry even the smallest smidgen of nectar will not go overlooked. Nectar in season is super-abundant -- the plants are competing with each other to hold the fickle bees attention. The flowers are in an evolutionary race for attention and fidelity by sweetening and scenting the nectar -- the bees by being coy and hard-to-get ensure the flowers don't select a poor-reward syndrome.