Best Wildflowers (Pollinator Plants) for Bees

So you are looking for the best wildflowers for bees? Or perhaps you googled “best pollinator for bees”… Either way, we’ve got some answers for you.

Typically, for bees you want wildflowers that are charismatic and showy. They use their sexy looks to attract bees to them. So if the flower is “loud” aesthetically and pretty to you, then it probably is putting the same signals out for bees. This is just a rule of thumb though. There are a couple of other things to consider.

Something else to think about when looking for the best flowers for bees to pollinate is their bloom season. You want to have diverse bloom season. You should be looking for flowers to be blooming from May until the beginning of October. You won’t find any specific native wildflower that will do that for you, but if you get an array of wildflowers and pay attention to their bloom period, then you can create a mixture of flowers that offers nectar to bees all season.

Some of our favorite early blooming flowers would be Spiderworts, Canada Anemone, Golden Alexander’s, Foxglove Penstemon, and Alumroot.

Some great mid summer bloomers are Black-Eyed Susan, Coneflowers, Wild Bergamot, and Milkweeds.

Late summer/into fall options are Asters, Blazing Stars, and Ironweed.

(You can find these species and dozens more here.)

Another major piece to finding great pollinator-friendly wildflowers is native region. You can definitely get wildflowers from Eurasia, but the bees native to North America love wildflowers that they co-evolved with. So if you’re looking to have the best pollinator plot you can, you’ll want to stay as native to your region as possible.

If you are wanting to plant potted wildflowers, then we recommend going to your local greenhouse and ask what native wildflowers they have. This works well for landscaping on a small scale. You can piece your wildflowers together one at a time to make it as beautiful and pollinator-friendly as possible.

However, if you have a large yard to fill or even a large field, you’ll want to check out our native wildflower mixes here. We made sure to consider our Midwest region and have several species from each bloom season.

Thank you for reading.

Best of luck, friend!

-   Nicolas Lirio, Business Coordinator of Hoksey Native Seeds and The Prairie Farm