Feed Your Bees: A Landscaping Guide for North Central Florida Backyard Beekeepers: WEC477/UW546, 10/2025

Abstract

Honey bees collect nectar from flowers and must visit an estimated two million flowers to make one pound of honey. In 2023, beekeepers in Florida harvested an average of 35 pounds of honey from each of the state’s 210,000 honey-producing colonies. That’s 70 million flower visits per colony in one year alone! High incidences of honey bee floral visitation combined with increased backyard beekeeping raise concerns about potential competition between honey bees and native pollinators, which may contribute to biodiversity declines.  Conservation-minded beekeepers can balance colony provisioning and native pollinator conservation by landscaping for bees at their hives.

This guide, which focuses on north central Florida, explores how landscape biodiversity benefits honey bees and native pollinators and offers landscaping solutions to increase on-site forage while supporting native plant diversity and pollinator populations.