An Australian bee garden

The flora sets the terms

Australian bee forage is dominated by woody natives — eucalypts, melaleucas, banksias, callistemons — rather than by herbaceous flowers, and that changes what a garden can do. A single mature yellow gum or swamp mahogany outproduces an entire border, and much of the useful advice is about retaining trees rather than planting perennials.

Eucalypt flowering is also famously irregular. Many species flower heavily every two to four years rather than annually, and the timing shifts with rainfall, which is why Australian beekeeping is migratory to a degree that European beekeeping is not. A garden cannot smooth that out, but understorey planting can cover the years the canopy does not.

Planting for the native bees, not only for the hive

Australia's native bees are overwhelmingly solitary, and a substantial number are buzz pollinators. Blue-banded bees, teddy bear bees and carpenter bees grip a flower and vibrate their flight muscles to shake pollen from anthers that open only through a terminal pore — a technique honey bees do not have. Tomatoes, eggplants, Hibbertia, Dianella and a long list of natives depend on it.

• Plant natives with poricidal anthers — Hibbertia, Dianella, Solanum species — if you want buzz pollinators in the garden.
• Leave bare, undisturbed, sunny ground. Most native bees nest in soil, and mulch over everything removes the nest sites.
• Retain dead wood and pithy stems. Reed bees nest in the pith of cut stems, and a tidied garden has none.
• Stingless bees can be kept in the warmer states, and a hive is a genuine option in Queensland and northern New South Wales in a way it is not further south.

The weeds question

Australia has strict and locally variable declared-weed legislation, and several plants this site recommends elsewhere are on those lists. Planting them is in some states an offence rather than a bad idea.

• Viper's bugloss — Paterson's curse, a declared weed across large areas of rangeland, and simultaneously a significant honey plant.
• Gorse and broom — declared weeds and major control targets.
• Bramble — seriously invasive across the southeast.
• Ragwort, thistles, fennel, oxeye daisy and St John's wort — all listed somewhere, and all decent forage.
• Mesquite and prickly acacia — introduced for fodder and now among the worst woody weeds of the north.