[Chaffy]

We're just starting to clear our "spare" land ready to turn it into a micro holding, and our friend has approached us asking if she could keep a hive or two in it.. (This is great for us as we love bees but dont want to actually be beekeepers lol)

Anyway; it's bordered by a hedge on 2 sides with a nice sunny slope with a small stream and some young trees scattered for shade but what plants, shrubs, herbs, layouts etc should we start putting in ready to make 5 star accommodation?

I've also started turning the neighbouring paddocks into minty, herby havens (more for the ponies but bonus point that bumblebees seem to like it!), is there any special plants that are great for bees that will grow happily in a horse paddock?

Thanks in advance 

[kellyrose]

Alfalfa has many varieties and some of them look pretty good as decorative flowers!

[Steph Hen]

Bees and especially honey bees rarely forage close to the nest/hive. So if you want to provide food for them put it a few hundred meters/1km away.

[VEG]

yep plant what you like near to them they tend to ignore it

[Olly398]

Most of the above is true, but you'll still get lots of lovely bees (maybe not yours!) and pollinators if you plant the right stuff.
All flowering herbs are good. Borage, comfrey, lavender off the top of my head.
But this makes interesting reading:
https://botanicgarden.wales/2017/02/honey-bees-like-living-close-hedge-official/

[cloddopper]

Bees love clover both red & white  . Second cut clover produces the greatest nectar flows .
  It's not that bees don't work what is close to the hives , it's a case of it being pollenated first and as the plant starts to produce seeds the quality of subsequent flowers have little or no nectar available as the plant has now turned the corner so to speak & moved to seed production mode .

  Grazed over clover left to flower also gives a lot of second cut quality flowers/ honey too ..

 Hardy Fuchsia cuttings  made in the home cutting bed and used to make fuchsia hedges  carry viable nectar flowers from early June till the first frosts.

 A hundred cuttings , dipped in rooting compound & put in the ground from now to early October should give you almost 100  viable rooted plants .
By this time next year they will be about 18 to 20 inches tall and can be planted out into a quality compost filled hole , with a thick cardboard anti weed  mat round the base , after you first sprinkle a teaspoon of mycrozial ( sp ? )  fungi granules into each root hole .
 
In three years if you cut them back to about 6 inches tall each winter ( this also gets more over wintering slow rooting cuttings as well ) after the flowers die off,  the plant will now be well acclimatised & have a good root system .

You can leave the hedge alone from this point on and give it an annual hedge cutting at the end of October to tidy things up for the next year  .

Such a hedges can attain a height of 6 mtrs with a similar foot print & are almost impenetrable to live stock if planted every two to three feet apart .

I didn't realise the quality of the fuchsia as hedges until last year when we spent the best part of a month in Southern Ireland . Most of the caravan sites we stayed at had loads of hedges made up with closely planted just fuchsia shrubs which  helped give good shelter from slashing rain & " Atlantic breezes " .

Note:- Prolonged  sub zero oC temperatures can kill off some fuchsia strains  after six or seven days at minus 4 oC or greater . so look for very hard plants in the first place

 The fuchsia I have in our six hanging baskets & the half dozen or more taller ones out in the flower beds are six years old and have encountered quite a few minus five to minus 8 oC temps during their  lifetime . But it may have helped that they are slightly sheltered from super cold NW round to NE winds  due to the hill & wood land at the rear of our property .

Edited much later to make more sense
Dave 17 August 2017