Thursday, May 17, 2012

There's a Reason They Call it Bee Balm!

This is the bed I put in about 3 years ago.  It is roughly 7 feet long and 2 feet wide.  I planted a lot of different things in it, plants I got on sale or things I transplanted.  The bee balm has taken over 3/4 of it this year and I keep snipping flower heads to dry to make salve and tincture.  Discovered I really did not like the taste of the tea, too medicinal for me even with a little fruit juice added.
Click the photos to enlarge them and you can see why it is called bee balm!  I had to share my gathering with the bees yesterday evening.
Bees won't bother you if you go gently and quietly and slowly.
I caught two in this photo.  The one near the top left corner is to the right of the big flower.  We had a hollow tree where I used to live and one year I found myself surrounded by hundreds of bees just swirling.  They were swarming.  I just stood still and watched and they soon settled on small tree where they stayed for several days until they made a new home somewhere.
There were a couple of butterflies out there yesterday too but they would not sit still long enough to get their picture taken.

1 comment:

tinapuntasecca said...

Hi! I found your blog through Rhonda's Down To Earth blog. You left a comment about your flowering herbs, and I immediately wanted to see your blog. I just made some lemon balm salve, and have some yarrow flowering for the first time. I had been researching what to do with it, and I bought a bee balm plant yesterday! I love the bee balm photos, I'm excited to get mine growing.

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