How to Create a Habitat for Stem-Nesting Bees

Get this, some bees develop in the stems of plants and overwinter. These types of bees are known as stem-nesting bees. And by deadheading your plants too early in the fall, you are destroying their natural habitat. Here are some essential steps you can take to start creating habitats for your local stem-nesting bees. 

Stem-Nesting Bee Habitat Care in Spring

In the spring, you will want to cut back all of your dead foliage and do your deadheading. While we may often want to deadhead our gardens in the late fall, this can disrupt the natural processes these bees rely on in order to fulfill their lifecycle. In the spring you want to cut back perennials to varying heights from 8 to 24 inches high. In the spring the freshly born bees will find pockets of naturally occurring pollen. They will use these cavities to lay eggs on the pollen . 

Caring for Stem-Nesting Bees in the Summer

In the summer the plants will basically do their thing. As long as you mulch and fertilize your landscape properly, your flowering perennials will mostly do their own thing. The bee larvae will develop in the stems during the growing season. 

How to Protect Stem-Dwelling Bees in the Fall

During the fall is where we as people who love our gardens tend to mess up. Most of us deadhead our flowering perennials such as Echinachea. This is when the bees are hibernating and need the protection of the stem the most. During the winter months, these stems will provide a habitat for the bee larvae to develop overwinter.

Caring for Stem-dwelling Bees 

At the end of the day, caring for your stem-dwelling bees is pretty much as simple as deadheading in the spring instead of the fall. Deadheading is certainly part of proper yard upkeep. But it's much more beneficial to our environment to schedule our desires around nature. By embracing those schedules, we can begin to keep time with the Earth. 

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