Hi Kirsten, I agree. 2 of the videos on youtube of golden penders are mine, look for the videos under my name. Showing the birds & bees. Every pender in the district flowered heavy, the heaviest for about 18 years from memory, everyone was talking about them. I looked on the net at images of ground covers with little blue flowers & the best I could find was blue sapphire. Bees also love lavender. I remember once an old beekeeper telling me that bees do well on a lot of low lying flowering plants. Take clover, for exampleā¦ I havenāt got one, but one thing you could do if you wanted to is build an insect hotel. To attract all sorts of native bees & wasps to your area. I think the theme is ābuild it & they will comeā.
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I think the ground cover you might be referring to Jeff, with the little blue flowers that the bees love is Lippia. As an introduced plant to Aus, apparently it can become a pest in some parts of the country. I grow it here in WA, our rainfall is very low, it hasnāt spread beyond where it is given water.
Another good flowering ground cover, and native to Aus, is myoporum parvifolium
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Hi & thank you Jay, I looked at lots of images of Lippia, That isnāt the one Iām talking about. Iāll keep my eye out for some & take a photo of it, cheers
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Hi Jeff I missed this post of yourās previously? I think I might replant some lavender, we had some but summer before last it just didnāt survive. Our garden is too big to water (expensive even with rain water tanks) so I plant a lot of things & whatever manages to survive on its own, I plant more of. It is going to be very hot this summer but Iāve got a better spot in the garden after a tree came down which might suit some lavenders. Iāll try & narrow down the āblue saphireā too, maybe someone else will have some ideas? Love the insect hotel idea, I think Iāll get my nieces & nephew to help theyāre just starting to become interested in the garden. Iāve had two very large Dragonflies here over the last couple of days hunting the bees as they make their way back to the hive.
This is a Tau Emerald, the ones that have been hunting the bees. Not my photo, is from this article which is interesting of itself?
Hi Kirsten, thatās interesting. I think dragonflies have been around since before dinosaurs. Donāt quote me on that:) I have a couple of videos Iāll put on here of bees as prey in my backyard. Do you get Assassin Bugs down there. Iām sure you get Golden Orb Weavers. I took the video of the Orb Weaver with a degree of urgency because with them, itās here today, gone tomorrow. They become food for quite large wasps we see here from time to time. I hope your nieces & nephew have fun building the insect hotel, cheers.
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This is the Golden Orb Weaver spinning/repairing itās web.
On Wikipedia, thereās a beautiful photo of a vest made from Golden Orb-weaver web in a London museum.
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Great idea and itās so easy to propagate.
The bumblebees love it.
I once bought a jar of lavender honey from a lavender farm in France. I was hoping it might have a whiff of the flower but alas no. What a disappointment
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Havenāt noticed any assassin bugs but we do sometimes have the Golden orb weaver, nothing like the oneās we had in far north Queensland though, they were catching small bats their webs were so big! They are magnificentā¦ imagine collecting the web & making the vestā¦as always great videos, thanks for sharing them.
Hi & thank YOU Kirsten:) Today someone showed me a video of two large carpet snakes mating. Actually in their back yard. That was amazing. When you think about it, we have some amazing wildlife at our back doors & beyond. Itās cooling down slightly, Iām off to do some bee work.
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We are really lucky, I hope that as more people pursue their interest in bees and the plants they need that it leads to an even greater appreciation of how many amazing flora & fauna there are & how inter connected it all is. 
All plans in place for getting the bees down next week, have hired an extending ladder & pick up my hive on friday.
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Hi Kirsten, good luck with that. I was thinking about the height of the box, well it looks rather high in the photo. Then I started to think, āwell, someone got it up thereā. Please donāt fall. I fell off a plank last Thursday trying to get some bees. Iām lucky I didnāt finish up in hospital. When I was coming down, my wife thought sheād be ringing the ambulance, for sure. Iāve got plenty of bruises that always look worse on an old person & possibly some cracked ribs.
It was a lesson learned: Just take more precautions next time. The worse part is my wife wasnāt videoing at the time:) She reckons itās a blessing in disguise because it got me to the optometrist to get new glasses. Thatās really a blessing for me because then Iāll be able to see eggs much clearer. Anyway, be careful, bye:)
Sounds very painful! I hope you are well on the mend. I think itās approx. 8m up, we had to have an arborist do some work on some very old eucalypts & while they were here we got them to put up the boxes. We put them up high because of the birds we were trying to attract & to make sure were safe from predators (cats in particular!). The other 2 boxes which have much larger bee colonies are 15m up. The arborist does not want to deal with bees & beekeepers donāt want to climb, so they have a safe home for the foreseeable futureā¦
I will be very careful, have some strapping & will attach rope & lower so donāt have to carry anything on way down. Throughout the day there are a lot of bees covering the front of the box, do you think I should smoke them while I get the strapping & rope attached?
Thank you Kirsten:) itās mainly my ribs that hurt. 8 meters sounds high, but 15 meters, wow, that IS high. Yes Kirsten, I would give them some smoke, for sure. Itās a bit of a lottery as to the temperament of the bees. I only got one sting on my ear last Thur. mainly because the side of my head landed near the bee nest. The bees were very quiet considering what happened. They had a nest built in the open on branches about 12 feet up. I was really silly not giving myself more support standing on a wooden plank on 2 wooden trestles. The homeowners felt really bad so I tried not to show any pain. Good luck with yours, take care, bye
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Following top on planting for a bee friendly garden, if you are in Australia, this company sells Australian native seeds, pretty much anything you could possibly want.
<---- clickable image
I did a bit of research about what Australian native trees are good pollen and nectar producers, and when they flower, to try to get coverage of both throughout the year.
I put in an order for about $50, which includes a total of several hundred seeds for 20 different types of trees/shrubs. I will try my hand at germinating them (Australian natives a notoriously difficult, some require smoke in the soil to trigger), and then planting them out next spring (9 months from now).
I have a 80 acre property, which used to be a cattle station, and now being actively and passively reforested. For me, beekeeping is about looking after the land as well as the bees.
Disclaimer: I have no financial interest in this company. I just found them online, and was impressed with their range and customer service.
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For people in Victoria this is a great ref/shopping place for Native seed too.
I planted 5 of these today, Eucryphia lucida, or leatherwood, the honey of which is gorgeous. This is why I will try a few frames of the Flow system, so I can try specific vrieties (hopefully!). They flower prolifically, native bees love them too & they are beautiful trees or shrubs, depending on the species.
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I have one of those. Lovely tree but probably never gets warm enough here for it to produce nectar. I have an Aralia and an Evodia both will bloom for the first time this year. I have great hopes for them producing late nectar
Iām so excited about finally having the right space to put them in, have been on my list for so long & the honey they produce was my Grandfathers favourite, heād go to Tasmania specially for it. I canāt remember which part of the UK your in, but if not too far North, I imagine should get some, as Tasmania has a very cool climate too. (These plants are endemic to Tasmania, not found on mainland other than planted/grown).
Iād love to see some pics when they do bloom 
Weāve planted many native plants here on our 1 hectare block in mid-west WA over the years and now that we are starting out on our beekeeping journey itās become apparent we have unintentionally planted a bee friendly garden. Iām going to take pictures twice each month to remind myself of what is flowering and when. Here are some photos I took on the last day of July.
Grevilleas:
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Hakea bucculenta - the bees are all over these today, the bushes are humming!
Geraldton wax right/ grevillea notsureofthenameaā¦ left:
Banksia ashbyi
Banksia prionotes back / Geraldton wax left / grevillea honey gem right
This next pic was not taken this week, but I thought Iād share some pretty crazy action I once captured on a Geraldton wax:
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