Forage
What blooms in this band
Orlando sits on the UF/IFAS Central Florida plant table, the same band as the management calendar: Marion County south through Sarasota County. A panhandle seed mix and a Miami list both miss the weeks that actually feed a colony here. Florida Honey Bee Plants is the table. This page is a walk of that table for a lot in Orange, Seminole, or Osceola County.
Climate, plant communities, and timing of floral resources differ significantly between the three main regions in Florida.
How to read the table
Florida Honey Bee Plants splits the peninsula. North Florida, Central Florida, and South Florida are different years. Use the Central Florida months. A plant that pays in January in Gainesville can sit quiet here until maple and willow actually open.
The table names nectar and pollen sources, not a landscaping catalog. Some of those plants are already in the ditch. Leaving a Bidens strip is forage work. Sowing a packet is forage work only if the mix matches this band.
A year on this lot
| When | What is in flower | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| January to February | Maple, willow | Early pollen. A busy box can still be light. Do not mow the wet edge. |
| March to April | Citrus, then gallberry | The short paid window. One yard lime is a map, not a flow. |
| Warm months | Spanish needles, cabbage palm, saw palmetto | Hold the dearth. Bidens is famine food. Leave a wild strip. |
| Fall | Aster, goldenrod, late Bidens | Stores before the short days. |
FDACS Plants for Bees puts cabbage palm and saw palmetto on a native list and calls Bidens alba famine food. It also calls Bidens a notorious weed in the wrong bed. Leave it in waste ground. Do not sow it into a HOA planting strip.
Seed that matches the band
A packet labeled for Florida is not automatically the Florida Honey Bee Plants table. Read the species. Clover-heavy southern pasture can fill a gap after citrus. A Gulf Coast wildflower mix only helps when the listed plants actually open in this county. Get this Florida and Gulf Coast mix, or Get this Florida Tropics pasture, if you are planting a patch. A larger southern subtropics bag is On the shop.Get this. Prices live with the seller.
Shrubs do more than a gram of seed. Gallberry, cabbage palm, and red maple are on the papers. Plant those if the lot can hold them. Seed is the patch between the fence and the mower.
What not to plant
Brazilian pepper can bloom in some Septembers. Keeping Bees in Florida notes it. The plant is invasive. Leave it off a planting list. If a wild stand already opens, that is a field note, not a landscaping plan. Invasives were left off the UF nectar tables for a reason.
Questions
Do I need a hive to plant forage?
No. Forage feeds the bees that already commute through a lot. A box is a later door on the hive stack.
Where is water in this story?
On the neighbor guidelines. The Good Neighbor Guidelines wants a drink on the same ground as the forage, not at a pool.
Sources
- Florida Honey Bee Plants. Central Florida bloom table.
- FDACS Plants for Bees. Native shrubs and Bidens as famine food.
- Keeping Bees in Florida. Dearth, citrus, Brazilian pepper as a field note.