Lemon balm
A lemon-scented mint-family herb whose botanical name comes directly from the Greek for honey bee, and which has been planted near hives for at least two thousand years. Beekeepers rubbed it inside empty skeps to encourage swarms to settle, and the practice is old enough to appear in Pliny — one of the few plant-and-bee associations with a continuous documented history that long.
Value to bees
- Nectar
- High
- Pollen
- Moderate
- As a honey crop
- Not a honey source
- Which bees, and why
- Honey bees work the small flowers steadily, and it is a good plant for the mint-family specialists. The historical claim that it attracts swarms is traditional rather than demonstrated — the plant does contain compounds resembling components of the Nasonov pheromone, which makes the tradition interesting rather than established.
- Worth knowing
- A good nectar source over a long season, provided it is allowed to flower — which is the catch, since it is usually harvested as a leaf herb before it does.
Flowering
- In flower
- June to September (northern hemisphere)
Growing it
- Conditions
- Sun or part shade on almost any soil. It is undemanding to the point of becoming a nuisance.
- Size
- 50-100 cm tall and as wide.
- Native range
- Southern Europe, the Mediterranean and western Asia, and naturalised widely.
- Suits
- Small gardens, Containers and window boxes, Large gardens
- Maintenance, and the bit that matters
- Self-seeds freely and can dominate a border. Growing it in a container is a reasonable compromise.
- Let some of it flower. Harvesting the leaves continuously removes the entire forage value.
- It self-seeds prolifically; deadhead if you do not want it everywhere.
- Cut back hard after flowering for a fresh flush of leaves.
- A variegated or golden cultivar is less vigorous and easier to contain in a small garden.
What it looks like
A bushy perennial with softly hairy, deeply veined, oval leaves smelling strongly of lemon when crushed, and small inconspicuous white or pale yellow two-lipped flowers in the leaf axils.
Sources
- The World History of Beekeeping and Honey Hunting — Routledge (1999) · Historical text
- Field Guide to the Bees of Great Britain and Ireland — Bloomsbury (2015) · Field guide
How sources are selected and weighted is set out in the sources and evidence policy.
Guides covering this plant
- Plants that attract honey bees specificallyHoney bees have short tongues and work in large numbers, which means they want different plants from bumblebees. Half the flowers sold as bee-friendly are out of their reach entirely.
- A Mediterranean bee gardenThe one climate where the bee-friendly planting and the drought-tolerant planting are the same list. The Mediterranean gap is not winter — it is the dead of summer, and the plants that solve it are mostly herbs.
Tools for planning planting
- Flowering calendar
What should I plant so that something is always in flower for bees?
- Bee-friendly garden planner
What should I plant in the space I actually have?
- Plant recommendation tool
Which plant fills this specific gap?