Flowering plants to help bumblebees currently

Blackthorn?  It’s the first thing that flowers in my garden in early March-ish each year. 

The bees seem to like it. 

Blackthorn is a good call, plum cherries are even earlier! Will certainly consider for the future! 

I am looking for things I can buy now to bridge the gap until my geraniums start. 

Primulas, muscari (grape hyacinth) and forget me nots will all be popular.

Blackthorn is indeed good for bees. But  don't turn your back on it, it quickly turns into the stabbiest thug you could ever meet.

That's perfect! Thank you, added to my shopping list!

Winter flowering honeysuckle is a great early bee shrub. Smells fantastic too.

Pussy willow is probably the best plant currently (it's the one with the yellow furry catkins) if you've got space for a small tree in a dampish location. Can easily be coppiced to keep it compact.

If you're on acidic/lighter sandy soils then you can't go wrong with gorse.

Viburnum Tinus is another early flowering shrub that good for bees.

Then of course there's crocus, primroses, snordrops, hellebores etc which will all happily seed around the garden in shady places.

Dandelions are a very useful bee plant and surprisingly cheap and easy to grow! I've got pulmonaria which spreads itself around nicely, bees are enjoying it just now. Pussywillow is a good call.

Snowdrops, Daffodills and crocuses I guess if thats not too obvious. 

Gorse flowers January to June

Mahonia, skimmia and Hellebore are out at the moment. Our grape hyacinths have naturalised and spread considerably- bees love them. Primrose are good too. 

My snowdrops and crocuses finished flowering a while ago, the winterjasmine is rather sparse this year and only have a couple dandelions and daffodils. 

I bought 2 pots of primroses and some pansies. Just hope these hypercultivated varieties are not completely sterile and devoid of nectar! Fingers crossed! Thanks for all the suggestions!

To echo a few of the earlier suggestions, the bees are buzzing around our Mahonia and Viburnum, which both have lovely flowers this time of year. 

Bergenia is starting to flower up in Edinburgh, it's good.  You might even be able to pinch a bit from someone as it's quite vigorous.  Ceanothus should be out fairly soon too and if you can find one, we have a Stranvaesia in our garden which was covered in bees last year.  

Bullace instead of blackthorn.

Lesser Celandine seems popular with bees. 

Apparently bumblebees love Cyclamen coum and they are flowering well in my front garden at the moment and have been doing so for the last 6 weeks.

We've a load of hyacinths flowering. Daffs and tulips are coming on, but not out. One thing that is great for bees later in the season, is lavender, they go mad for it.  

Blackthorn is something you absolutely do NOT want in your garden! It spreads via suckers below ground, and it will spread everywhere, unless you dig a deep trench, and I mean deep, and sink paving slabs in to act as a barrier. Just don’t plant it in the first place.

Hawthorn, on the other hand, while prickly, won’t act like Trump over Greenland. Gorse smells nice and bees like that, it can be kept under control fairly easily, and mine has had flowers on it since the beginning of the year. Certain types of ivy are late flowering which bumblebees appreciate, but it can be a bit of a pain in the wrong place.

I’ve got a flowering grape, which had a bumblebee buzzing around it on Sunday afternoon! Joey used to describe it as the cat pee tree! Bees do like it, though and it’s a very early flowering plant.

Fortunately it’s at the bottom of the garden, where I can’t smell it! Looks nice, needs trimming back fairly regularly, as it throws out lots of shoots from the base.

Cowslips are very attractive to bees, and flower for quite a long time, I have them literally all over my garden, started with one by the path crossing the lawn, now they grow all over the patio between the slabs, I’ve found them growing in flower pots with other plants already there, although they aren’t as bad as the violets, which are incredibly invasive, and are flowering, and it’s not going to be long before the cowslips are in flower. Native primroses are a good choice as well.

Bumblebees were active on my flowering grape and gorse at the bottom of the garden earlier today, so that shows they’re good plants for early insects, particularly bumblebees.