BEE HAPPY HONEY | The Bee Garden | October
October feels like the end. For your bees, it is the last chance. A few plants can make a real difference on these final warm days.
There is a particular kind of October afternoon in Northern Ireland, one of those mild golden days that arrives completely unexpectedly in the middle of what has otherwise been a grey and drizzly month, where the light goes horizontal and everything looks briefly magnificent. On those afternoons your bees are flying. Working hard. Making the most of it.
And if you have already tidied everything up and cut back the perennials and declared the garden finished for the year, they have nothing to find.
Two plants in particular are worth keeping around into October. One of them you probably already have and may not have taken seriously. The other you might have been calling the wrong thing for years.
Plant One: Michaelmas Daisy
First things first. If you have been calling these dog daisies, they are not dog daisies. Dog daisies are the classic white and yellow wildflowers that bloom in summer meadows, Leucanthemum vulgare. Completely different plant, completely different season.
Michaelmas daisies are Asters. Purple, pink, or white, flowering from late August right through October, with open yellow centres that bees can access easily. That open centre is the whole point. Look at one closely and you can see exactly why bees love it. No buried nectar, no layers of petals in the way. Just a wide landing pad with food right there in the middle.
Bees can see purple better than almost any other colour. A clump of Michaelmas daisies on a warm October afternoon is essentially a neon sign saying free food this way.
The variety worth looking for specifically is Aster Mönch. It is one of the most recommended for pollinators, holds itself upright without staking, flowers for weeks, and produces masses of that classic lavender blue that bees find irresistible. It comes back every year and gradually spreads into a bigger clump without becoming a nuisance. Bombproof is the word most gardeners use for it.
The Strange and Wonderful History of the Michaelmas Daisy
We appreciate that a daisy is not the most thrilling plant in the world. So here are the facts that made us look at them differently.
They are not from here. Michaelmas daisies are North American plants that arrived in European gardens in 1710 and eventually escaped into the wild. That purple daisy growing on road verges and waste ground in October is a plant from the other side of the Atlantic that has been living here for over three hundred years and has made itself completely at home.
The name Aster comes from the Greek word for star, referring to the shape of the flower heads. Every one of those pointed petals radiating out from the centre is a ray floret, and what looks like a single flower is actually dozens of tiny flowers packed together. The yellow centre alone contains hundreds of individual florets, each producing nectar. When a bee lands on a Michaelmas daisy she is not visiting one flower. She is visiting a whole field of them without moving her feet.
Michaelmas Day falls on September 29th. It was one of the old Quarter Days in the farming calendar, when rents fell due and leases began and ended. The daisy was named for blooming at exactly that moment in the year. There is something lovely about a plant that marks the turning of the season so reliably that an entire festival was connected to it.
And finally, the botanical name situation is genuinely funny. The RHS recently reclassified most Asters from the genus Aster to a new genus called Symphyotrichum. This is technically more accurate. It is also completely unpronounceable. Nobody is using it. They are still Asters and they are still Michaelmas daisies and that is the end of it.
Plant Two: Sedum
Sedum spectabile, the ice plant, is the other October reliable. Flat-topped flower heads in pink or white from August onwards, still going on a warm October day when almost everything else has finished. Bees and butterflies work it enthusiastically right to the end of its season.
It is not glamorous. It does not have a fascinating history. It just does its job quietly and reliably every year without requiring anything from you. In the bee garden, that counts for a lot.
What to Actually Do in October
The practical advice for October is mostly about restraint. Do not cut back flowering plants while they still have bees on them. Leave the ivy alone until November. Resist tidying the sedum until it has genuinely finished. Check the hive weight. If the colony feels lighter than it should, think about supplementary feeding before the cold sets in properly.
The garden jobs can wait a few more weeks. The bees cannot.
The October Imposter: Double Chrysanthemums
October is chrysanthemum season in garden centres. Big, blowsy, fully double ones in every colour, sold cheerfully as autumn patio plants.
Most garden chrysanthemum varieties are doubles. Multiple layers of petals, buried centres, no accessible nectar. They are genuinely beautiful and the bees cannot use them at all.
Single-flowered chrysanthemum varieties do exist and are better. Korean chrysanthemums and some species types have open simple flowers. But they are not what garden centres typically stock in October. If you want late colour that also helps bees, Aster Mönch and a good clump of sedum will serve you far better than a tray of double chrysanthemums.
THE GOOD: Aster Mönch on a warm October afternoon. Lavender blue, wide open centre, bees treating it like it is the last buffet of the year. Which, to be fair, it nearly is.
THE BAD: Tidying the garden before the bees have finished with it. The chrysanthemums can wait. The sedum can wait. The ivy can wait. Everything can wait until November.
THE STICKY: A plant from North America that arrived here in 1710, named after an old farming festival, made of hundreds of tiny flowers pretending to be one big one, and loved by bees because purple is basically their favourite colour. The Michaelmas daisy deserved better than being called a dog daisy all these years.
This post is part of The Bee Garden series, where we look at what to plant for honey bees in Northern Ireland, month by month through the year. Next up: November, and the bulbs you need to plant now so your bees have food in March.
Mum & Bee Girl x