What makes a good bee habitat?
A good bee habitat may exist in the surrounding landscape of your farm. The landscape in your area will have a significant influence on the local bee population.
Assuring there are both places to live and flowers for food helps your farm have a diverse population of bees locally to pollinate your crops. A good bee habitat includes:
- A mix of flowering plants, including plants that bloom at different times of year
- Areas with bare ground, leaf litter, plant stems, and dead logs that aren’t disturbed in the fall or winter.
Where Minnesota bees spend the winter
Bees are not migratory – they live in the same spot all year round. This means that we need dedicated spaces not only for bees to have their homes in the summer, but in the winter as well. Raking, removing plant debris, and fall tillage can destroy the nests where bees spend the winter.
What Minnesota bees eat
As pollinators, bees primarily rely on the nutrients they get from flowers. The key foods are nectar, which provides carbohydrates, and pollen, which provides protein, fats, and other nutrients. They also drink water from puddles, ponds, dew, and other places.
While our crops may bloom for only a few weeks, wild bees need food all season long. This means that farmers need to include a variety of flowering plants in the landscape from spring to fall.
Bees feed on a wide range of flowers, and a diverse population of bees is supported by having many types of plants that bloom at different times and have varying flower shapes.
Generally, the more diverse your local landscape is, the larger and more diverse your local bee population will be.
Where Minnesota bees live
Minnesota’s native bees live in a few different places.
- Some bees dig tunnels in the ground or in wood, some live in empty cavities, and some live in hollow stems.
- Bees that live alone (solitary bees) will raise a small group of offspring (often called brood) in their nests.
- Social bees, such as bumble bees, work together to build a colony and share tasks, including gathering food and raising young.
- Honey bees live in hives managed and placed by beekeepers.
Cavity-nesting bees
Bees that nest in cavities look for hollowed-out areas underground, in dead trees, or in brush piles.
Ground-nesting bees
There are many species of ground-nesting bees, and each species looks for a slightly different type of ground. Some prefer bare ground, others prefer gravel, and some prefer sand. Some like areas with thin vegetation. A key thing they all need is for limited disturbance in the area where they nest. Disturbing the soil will destroy the tunnels the bees dig and the brood inside those tunnels. They also prefer the areas where they nest to have good drainage and be relatively dry.
Stem nesting bees
Stem nesting bees are solitary bees that live in hollow or pithy stems. The stems can be anywhere from 1/8 to 5/16 inches in diameter and range from 8 to 24 inches in length. These stems can be oriented in many ways–vertical, horizontal, and diagonal–all work for some species. Bees need these stems to stay intact for a while, as this is where the bees live and their young spend the winter. Therefore, the stems need to be outside for summer, fall, winter, and the first part of the following spring.
How to enhance existing bee habitat on your farm
Your farm might already be home to bees! Semi-natural areas such as fallow fields, pastures, and shelterbelts can all support bees.
How much value might these spaces have to pollinators? It will be different for every spot. Pollinators need a mix of:
- flowering plants that bloom at different times
- bare ground
- protection from winter weather
- leaves
- stems
- dead logs
The more of these elements a space has, the more useful it will be for local bees. When you manage these areas, the way you choose to manage them can either help or harm pollinators.
Examples of semi-natural areas on and around farms
- woodlots
- along fence lines
- roadside ditches
- pastures
- fields in the Crop Reserve Program
The diversity and stability of the bee population will depend on how these areas are managed. They may be managed with mowing and pesticides, which means they provide both resources for and risks to pollinators.
Tips for managing these semi-natural areas
- Leave or enhance scrubby areas on the farm to boost pollinator resources.
- Identify areas of low production, such as low spots or areas with poor soil, and do not farm them. By removing these unproductive areas and instead installing pollinator habitat, you may be able to boost productivity in other areas of the farm.
- Leave trees and snags to provide bee nesting sites.
- Be selective in weed control to manage non-native, invasive plants that compete with native species that are valuable to pollinators.
- Mow these areas less frequently or at a higher height.
How to add bee habitat to the farm
There are many ways to add more of the habitat bees need.
Each of these strategies can offer additional benefits, such as enhancing soil health, providing wind protection, and reducing erosion. They also come with their own costs and considerations. Each farm is different.
Walking Plants Orchard and Molin Meadows Farm show two ways Minnesota farmers incorporated bee habitat on their property.
Cover crops that produce flowers, such as buckwheat, produce pollen and nectar that can support pollinators.
Cover crops are plants grown on the farm to provide environmental benefits, such as increasing soil health and fixing nitrogen. They may be planted before or after the main crop, or seeded in between crop rows.
There are several key considerations in managing cover crops, including timing the termination of the cover crop and maximizing nitrogen capture. Sometimes this means cover crops may need to be terminated when they are in full bloom to prevent seed set. Ideally, flowering cover crops are paired with other strategies to make sure there are flowering plants for bees to forage on.
More resources
Hedgerows are areas where woody and perennial plants are planted around farm and field borders. They offer the benefits of providing a windbreak, preventing wind erosion, and serving as a wildlife habitat.
If flowering trees, shrubs, and perennials are incorporated into the hedgerow, they can provide places for pollinators to forage. The year-round nature of these areas can also provide spots for overwintering.
More resources
Bee lawns replace a portion of traditional turf grasses with low-growing, flowering plants. Common plants integrated into Minnesota bee lawn mixes are Dutch white clover and self-heal. When these plants are flowering, there is an additional area for pollinators to forage.
These spaces have the extra benefit of needing minimal inputs in terms of fertilizer and pesticides.
Place bee lawns in places where pesticides aren’t used in crop management, such as in field margins or between rows. Mowing the flowers before pesticide application reduces the likelihood that bees will be foraging when sprays are applied.
More resources
Areas of native vegetation can help protect Minnesota’s water by controlling erosion and filtering water. They also provide areas where pollinators can forage and live year-round.
When these areas are composed of multiple species of native grasses and wildflowers that bloom throughout the season, they are valuable to pollinators.
These areas benefit from having a buffer from areas managed with pesticides. The smaller the distance between the plantings and the crop, the more pollination is observed, but the greater the risk of drift into the area. After establishment, work to prevent drift into these areas.
Resources for selecting plants
How to balance protecting bee habitat and managing pests
Growers using integrated pest management (IPM) techniques may see that some pollinators’ habitat requirements directly conflict with what bees need to have habitat.
For example, ground nesting bees need undisturbed soil, but many farmers use light tillage to remove weeds, or chop crop residues at the end of the season to limit the buildup of plant disease.
It is hard for one space on our farm to do everything. While you may not be able to provide year-round, undisturbed soil where you grow pumpkins, there may be another spot on your farm where you are able to provide it.
Some Minnesota farmers set aside portions of their land for pollinator plantings that provide year-round habitat for pollinators as well as beauty.
- Graham, Kelsey K., et al. “Pesticide drift into field margins threatens bee pollinators and other beneficial insects.” Environmental Entomology (2025): nvaf051.
- Graham, Kelsey K., Scott McArt, and Rufus Isaacs. “High pesticide exposure and risk to bees in pollinator plantings adjacent to conventionally managed blueberry fields.” Science of The Total Environment 922 (2024): 171248.
- Portman, Zachary M., et al. “A checklist of the bees (Hymenoptera: Apoidea) of Minnesota.” Zootaxa 5304.1 (2023): 1-95.
Reviewed in 2025