Want to help pollinators? Create a pollinator garden! Native plants help native pollinators.
Toronto is home to over 360 species of bees!
Native bees and honey bees are threatened by:
- Habitat loss
- Invasive species
- Diseases
- Pesticides
- Climate change
- Extreme weather
Learn more about native bees and honey bees and what you can do to help by exploring the sections below.
Wild About Bees flyer – printable pdf flyer.
Native Bees vs. Honey Bees
Let’s start by exploring the differences between wild, native bees and European honey bees—and why it matters.
The buzz on native bees
- Native bees are the most specialized and efficient pollinators. It is through pollination that plants produce seeds, fruits, and new plants.
- Some species of native bees are in drastic decline.
- When native bees disappear, they disappear forever.
The buzz on honey bees
- Honey bees are a non-native species, introduced from Europe, used in agriculture to pollinate crops and managed, as livestock, by beekeepers to produce honey.
- Honey bees are dying in large numbers but they are not an endangered species.
- When a honey bee colony dies, more honey bees can be purchased and new colonies started.
Did you know?
The Rusty-patched bumblebee—one of the most common native bees in southern Ontario just 50 years ago—hasn’t been seen in the wild in Ontario since 2009.
Native Bees |
Honey Bees |
More than 360 species exist in Toronto, over 600 in Ontario, and over 800 across Canada |
A single monoculture species, Apis mellifera, is commonly farmed in Canada |
Once lost, they cannot be replaced |
When a colony dies, bees can be purchased to start a new colony |
Wild |
Managed by humans |
Some species are endangered |
Not endangered |
Primarily solitary |
Social, live in colonies |
Nest in the ground or in cavities |
Live in hives |
Do not produce honey as they are dormant in winter |
Produce honey for overwintering |
Wide range of colours, including green, blue, red and purple |
Black and yellow |
Most species don’t sting |
Sting |
Have evolutionary, dependent relationships with native plants |
Have no evolutionary, dependent relationships with native plants |
Meet Toronto’s Official Bee – learn about this native green metallic sweat bee and why it was selected to be our official bee.
Considering backyard bee keeping?
You’ve heard about the pollinator crisis, you’ve heard that bees are in trouble, you’ve heard about Colony Collapse Disorder, and you want to do something to help. Interest in backyard beekeeping is growing, but is it the right thing to do?
Keeping honey bees doesn’t help to save wild bees, much like keeping backyard hens doesn’t save wild birds.
Here’s what you need to know:
- Keeping European honey bees in your backyard does nothing to help native bees and may actually harm them.
- Research suggests that honey bees may be a factor in the decline of some species of native bees; they can outcompete native bees for nectar and pollen, spread diseases and parasites, and negatively affect the reproductive health of native bees.
- Backyard beekeeping is a highly specialized hobby that requires time, skill, careful attention, and mentorship. If not done properly, it can have negative—and even dire—consequences for Ontario’s beekeeping industry, small-scale hobbyists, and wild, native bees.
- The Ontario Bees Act requires all beekeepers to register their hives with the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs. It also requires all hives to be at least 30 metres from a property line, which prohibits most Toronto homeowners from keeping honey bees in their backyards.
A single honey bee hive can contain 50,000 honey bees, which can consume the amount of pollen needed to feed about 110,000 offspring of a single native bee.
Are you thinking of buying managed bees, such as honey bees? Here are some questions to ask yourself first – Considerations for Buying Managed Bees from Pollination Guelph.
What is the best way to help native pollinators?
Create a pollinator garden!
The easiest and most effective way to help native pollinators is to plant native plants. By planting native plants, you will be providing much-needed habitat that native bees need to survive.
Native plants provide pollen and nectar which they need to feed themselves and their larvae, as well as places to nest and overwinter.
You can create pollinator habitat in your yard, on your balcony, at your condo or apartment building, at your office, school, faith centre, community garden—everywhere!
See our garden tips and plant list in the sections below to get you started.
Tips for creating a pollinator-friendly garden
An ideal pollinator garden will include the following:
- food sources – such as pollen and nectar from native flowers
- nesting and overwintering sites – such as bare soil, hollow stems, and leaves
- larval host plants – such as milkweed
Here are some tips to help you create a new pollinator garden or transform your existing garden to be more pollinator-friendly. The plants you choose and how you maintain your garden are important considerations.
Planting tips:
- Plant native: Choose native plants, trees and shrubs rich in pollen and nectar. Locally grown and pesticide free are best.
- Plant host plants: Butterflies lay their eggs on specific plants. Monarch butterflies, for example, will only lay their eggs on milkweed, the sole food source for their larva.
- Provide continuous bloom: Pollinators need a continuous source of pollen and nectar so select a variety of plants that will bloom from spring to fall.
- Mass plantings: Planting multiples of the same plant together in large groupings makes it easier for pollinators to find and collect pollen.
- Plant single bloom varieties: The petals of double or triple bloom varieties can block access to pollen and nectar.
- Prevent the spread of invasive plants: Monitor your property for invasive plants and remove them when detected. The invasive dog-strangling vine has a negative impact on Monarchs – female butterflies mistakenly lay their eggs on it since it’s in the milkweed family, instead of native milkweeds, causing their larvae to starve.
Other garden elements:
- Provide water: A birdbath or shallow dish of water with half submerged rocks will help bees and butterflies quench their thirst.
- Provide sun: Butterflies like to bask in the sun, so place a few flat rocks in sunny, sheltered locations.
Maintenance tips:
- Limit mulch: Many native bees build nests in soil, so leave some bare patches of soil and limit your use of mulch.
- Leave dead stems: Some bees hibernate and lay eggs in hollow stems. If you do cut, leave the bottom 8 inches in place and bundle the cut stems and place them in your garden. Bundles of sticks and stems that are put out for yard waste collection too early in spring will often contain overwintering bees. In the spring, wait until temperatures are consistently above 10o Celsius before cleaning up your garden.
- Keep your dead wood: Large branches and decaying logs can be kept in a sunny spot to provide much-needed overwintering habitat for bees and other wildlife.
- Leave the leaves: Leave the leaves where they fall or rake them into your garden to provide overwintering habitat for butterflies.
- Avoid tilling: Keep large patches of land unmown and untilled to provide secure and undisturbed nesting sites for ground-nesting bees.
- Minimize manicuring: A perfectly manicured lawn is a food desert for pollinators. Natural gardens and lawns offer the most benefits for pollinators in terms of food and nesting spots.
- Reduce mowing: To avoid disturbing ground-nesting bees, mow your lawn less often and set the blade at the highest level possible.
- Prune and deadhead: Remove dead flower heads to encourage new growth and a longer flowering season.
- Avoid pesticides: Avoid plants/seeds treated with systemic insecticides, such as neonicotinoids. And don’t spray pesticides. Toronto’s Pesticide Bylaw bans the cosmetic use of pesticides.
- Keep it natural: Converting a lawn or garden to concrete, gravel, mulch or artificial turf reduces valuable food and nesting sites.
Native wildflowers for Toronto gardens
Choosing native wildflowers can make your garden beautiful, easy to maintain and help support local pollinators like bees and butterflies.
Here are some native plants organized by season to help you provide a continuous source of food for pollinators. We’ve also indicated growing conditions in sun or shade.
Spring:
Common Name (Scientific Name) |
Likes sunny spots |
Likes sunny or shady spots |
Likes shady spots |
Larval host plant |
False Solomon’s seal (Maianthemum racemosum) |
|
yes |
yes |
|
Golden Alexanders (Zizia aurea) |
yes |
yes |
|
yes |
Hairy beardtongue (Penstemon hirsutus) |
yes |
yes |
|
|
Wild geranium (Geranium maculatum) |
|
yes |
yes |
|
Summer:
Common Name (Scientific Name) |
Likes sunny spots |
Likes sunny or shady spots |
Likes shady spots |
Larval host plant |
Anise hyssop (Agastache foeniculum) |
yes |
|
|
yes |
Bee balm (Monarda didyma) |
yes |
yes |
|
|
Black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta) |
yes |
|
|
|
Blue vervain (Verbena hastata) |
yes |
|
|
|
Boneset (Eupatorium perfoliatum) |
yes |
|
|
|
Butterfly milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa) |
yes |
|
|
yes |
Canada anemone (Anemone canadensis) |
yes |
|
|
|
Cardinal flower (Lobelia cardinalis) |
yes |
yes |
|
|
Culver’s root (Veronicastrum virginicum) |
yes |
|
|
|
Cup plant (Silphium perfoliatum) |
yes |
|
|
|
Dense blazing star (Liatris spicata) |
yes |
|
|
|
Evening primrose (Oenothera biennis) |
yes |
|
|
|
Fireweed (Chamerion angustifolium) |
yes |
|
|
|
Great blue lobelia (Lobelia siphilitica) |
yes |
yes |
|
|
Heath Aster (Symphyotrichum ericoides) |
yes |
|
|
|
Ironweed (Vernonia fasciculata) |
yes |
|
|
yes |
Joe-pye weed (Eutrochium maculatum) |
yes |
|
|
|
Lance-leaved coreopsis (C. lanceolata) |
yes |
|
|
|
Nodding onion (Allium cernuum) |
yes |
yes |
|
|
Pale purple coneflower (Echinacea pallida) |
yes |
|
|
|
Pearly everlasting (A. margaritacea) |
yes |
|
|
yes |
Showy tick trefoil (D. canadense) |
yes |
|
|
yes |
Swamp milkweed (A. incarnata) |
yes |
|
|
yes |
Turtlehead (Chelone glabra) |
yes |
|
|
yes |
Twinflower (Linnaea borealis) |
|
yes |
|
|
Virginia mountain mint (P. virginianum) |
yes |
|
|
|
Wild bergamot (Monarda fistulosa) |
yes |
|
|
|
Wild lupine (Lupinus perennis) |
|
yes |
|
|
Fall:
Common Name (Scientific Name) |
Likes sunny spots |
Likes sunny or shady spots |
Likes shady spots |
Larval host plant |
New England aster (Symphyotrichum novae-angliae) |
yes |
|
|
|
Stiff goldenrod (Solidago rigida) |
yes |
|
|
|
Woodland sunflower (Helianthus divaricatus) |
yes |
yes |
yes |
|
Native trees and shrubs for Toronto gardens
Native trees and shrubs offer benefits to pollinators too. Here are a few to consider based on size and moist soil conditions (see rain garden species).
Large species:
Small to medium species:
Rain garden species:
More native species profiles:
Additional Resources
Wild about Bees: Pollinator Garden Resource List
- A Flower Patch for the Rusty-Patched Bumblebee book – free download from Friends of the Earth Canada
- Wild About Bees brochure
- Pollinators in Peril study (Center for Biological Diversity, 2017)
- Bumblebee Watch – Citizen science is an important way to compile info about pollinators and is crucial to conservation.
- Books recommended for learning more about native plants and Indigenous ecological knowledge are: Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer; and Plants Have So Much to Give Us, All We Have to do is Ask: Anishinaabe Botanical Teachings, edited by Wendy Makoons Geniusz.
- Pollen Specialist Bees of the Eastern United States – by Jarrod Fowler and Sam Droege, 2020
- A book about the relationships between pollinators and native plants is Heather Holm’s book Pollinators of Native Plants.
- Douglas Tallamy’s work on the relationship between Lepidoptera (butterflies, moths and skippers) and plants is summarized in his book Bringing Nature Home.
- The In the Zone project – a collaboration between Carolinian Canada and World Wildlife Fund Canada
- You can find lists of native plant nurseries on the website of the North American Native Plant Society, Credit Valley Conservation, and Halton Master Gardeners
- From Nursery to Nature: Evaluating Native Herbaceous Flowering Plants Versus Native Cultivars for Pollinator Habitat Restoration – study by Dr. Annie White
- Grow Me Instead – Free downloadable brochure published by the Ontario Invasive Plant Council:
- No Fear of Stings! – Download the brochure
- The Problem with Honey Bees – article in Scientific American about honeybees and native bees. As well, google the work of Dr. Sheila Colla, at York University, who has published pioneering studies on threats to, and conservation of, native bees.
- For info on “bee washing” – a term coined by Scott MacIvor and a website by Charlotte de Keyzer
- For info on how bee hotels might not be working as advertised, check out Scott MacIvor and Laurence Packer’s study, ‘Bee Hotels’ as a Tool for Native Pollinator Conservation: A Premature Verdict
- Considerations for Buying Managed Bees from Pollination Guelph
- PollinateTO Community Grants – get a grant for your pollinator garden