How to Find Flowers for My Garden That Do Not Attract Bees

Travel to a local park, garden center or nursery to observe bees around other flowers. Go midday in prime flower-blooming season and observe which flowers attract bees and which are bee-free. Record the names of the bee-free flowers if possible.

Avoid criteria designed to attract bees, such as yellow, white, blue or purple flowers with fat or shallow openings to their nectar and pollen. Pass on most day-blooming flowers with attractive scents.

Pick up a flower or botany book. Search for listings of flowers that pollinate in other ways, such as by beetle, butterfly, hummingbird, wind or water. Identify which flowers have long, narrow, brightly colored tubular flowers whose nectar is inaccessible to bees and instead attract butterflies and hummingbirds. Wind-pollinated flowers tend to be found on ornamental grasses and trees, lack petals or bright colors, and have large amounts of light, feathery pollen and stigma situated to find air currents. Avoid carrion flowers, which attract beetles and flies and often sport purple or mottled brown flowers, unless you are absolutely sure their rotten flesh-like smell is not a bother.