Dead-nettle

Value to bees

Nectar

High

Pollen

Moderate

As a honey crop

Feeds the colony but rarely yields a surplus

Which bees, and why

A long-tongued bumblebee plant above all. The hooded flower requires an insect to push in under the upper lip, which suits a bumblebee's build exactly and excludes most short-tongued bees. Short-tongued bumblebees frequently rob it through the base instead.

A deep hooded corolla that excludes honey bees almost entirely. One of the clearest cases of flower architecture selecting its visitors.

Worth knowing

Good nectar over an exceptionally long season, including the winter months when almost nothing else is available to a foraging bumblebee.

Flowering

In flower

January to December (northern hemisphere)

White dead-nettle can be found flowering in any month of the year in mild areas, which almost nothing else manages.

When nectar flows

Steady and generous, with the nectar held deep in a hooded tube. It secretes in cool weather when many plants stop.

Year-to-year variation

Extremely dependable and never abundant enough to be a crop.

Growing it

Conditions

Sun or shade, any soil, and it thrives on disturbed and neglected ground.

Size

20-60 cm.

Native range

Europe and western Asia, naturalised widely.

Suits

Hedgerow, Small gardens, Large gardens, Meadow or wildflower area

• Nobody needs to plant it. The useful action is to leave hedge bottoms and rough corners uncut through the winter.
• Ornamental lamiums such as Lamium maculatum are good ground cover for dry shade and flower well for bees.
• Yellow archangel (Lamiastrum galeobdolon) is a related woodland plant and the variegated garden form is invasive in several countries — plant the plain species if at all.

What it looks like

Square-stemmed plants with nettle-like toothed leaves that do not sting, and whorls of two-lipped hooded flowers in white, pink or purple-red held in the leaf axils.