Eyes For You

maree and Jac2, Bees require both nectar and pollen for their well being. The nectar is basically food for survival during winter and hard times when nothing is blooming. Pollen is food for feeding young bees from egg stage until they are capped. After hatching they take up duties of nursing and feeding the young grubs in the cells prior to capping. Then they start to fly out and can be seen exercising and getting their bearings at about 1pm during nice days. They eventually fray their wings and work to death bringing in pollen and nectar. The nectar gathering bees love most of the flowers like Salvia which is also attractive to nectar eating birds like Rainbow Lorikeet, Honey Eaters and numerous other nectar eating birds.
Pollen is vital for feeding young bees from hatching to cell capping and the quality of pollen is selected based on percentage of protein.
Rose blooms seem well down their list of suitable pollen, however if that's the best available then they will use it. When better sources of pollen and nectar are available such as Acacia, Eucalyptus and various other plants and trees they will not bother with rose blooms.
If bees are placed on a certain site amoungst nectar only producing trees then they will fill the cells with nectar to become honey.
If the bees are not fed or moved to an area with pollen flora or trees they would die out or numbers drastically reduced.

Jac - On an unrelated red note - My other 2 reds are Chrysler Imperial (Not as good as PM OR Mr Lincoln but still nice), and Red Intuition (which is yet to flower). Falstaff is my David Austin

Thanks for that bee info, Ozeboy, very interesting. So the bees don’t really shun our roses, they just have better sources among the other garden flowers.
Would you say strong fragrance and pollen quality are somehow related?
Because I have no doubt that bee fighting so hard to get into GJ was driven wild by the fragrance and had no way of knowing what the pollen would be like before it got in; also it went straight back in, so it must have been good (with lots of other bee food around that was a lot easier to get to).

Teesh, I saw several comments about Chrysler Imperial being not as nice as MP and ML; would still be a nice rose to have though. Stripy RI is not on my list, only the fragrant ones. I don’t have a Falstaff, but something so similar that I can’t tell the difference from looking at the pictures, Munstead Wood, a slightly later model. There will be some photos of that pretty soon, yippee!

Be sure to email them or post them here

I took the first pictures this morning. There won’t be a full bloom for a couple of days thought; and they will be posted a.s.a.p.

Jac2, have never noticed a link between fragrance and pollen,
In winter I get good resulys from Salvia for nectar and Broad Leaf Dandelion as a source of pollen. That pollen is quite orange and can be seen on the pollen baskets. Australian Native Bees pollenate those very small blooms on a lot of our native species that European Honey Bees can't get into. They look like a small skinny bush fly except they have pollen baskets on their hind legs.

Have just checked Alan Clemson's book called "Honey and Pollen Flora"
Just stated roses attract bees when in bloom. Unfortunatly didn't give any other details.

Oi you lot.. post some more photos of your first blooms for the season .. Mine won't be out for another 4 weeks ... so pleeeeeeze post some photos..it is wicked to read so much of your good news and not to get the photos as well.. Eyes for you looks simply delicious..thanks for sharing..reminds me of the cultivar called euphrates

Some worker bees forage only for nectar, usually in the morning and others will focus on pollen, only to take a sip for their own needs every now and then.. pollen collectors tend to work later in the day, bees use a combination of odour and floral pattern to track down a source which if plentiful they will share the info with their colleagues..

...i do wonder why we don't see more random rose seedlings in our gardens, i am not that good at deadheading, have the bees, have the chilling regime for germination, yet no seedlings .. any thoughts rosebuds?

As you wish I have many more on Facebook if anyone would like to see more photos please PM me and I can add you there.

Harry Wheatcroft
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Freesia
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Brandy
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Thanks Ozeboy , the life of insects is certainly very interesting , and as bees seem to be threatened overseas , i'm trying to attract the little blighters as much as i can ....

Thank you very much RosyTeesh. I haven't seen Harry Wheatcroft before and it looks to be a splendid striped rose. Freesia is so cheery and I must try and grow brandy again. Thanks for sharing. Very lovely.

Anytime Can't wait to see more photos of everyone else's when they start to bloom

Same here , my roses are a fair way off , didn't prune till end of July , and it has been cold and rainy , so i'll just have to be content with looking at other peoples photos , thanks ....

That is the best thing about this vast land we live in which we call home. If we had all our flowers at once, what would we do then. I am glad we have stages of flowering.
Hariet, Balinbear(Gary) seems to be the one which has luck with seeds, raising from the roses he has, check the thread about "Tea Babies"

Fresia had the strongest and brightest (budgie) yellow in my old garden, and it would just no fade one bit, even in the strongest heat; the leaves didn’t singe either. It had excellent heat tolerance, healthy deep, dark green leaves and heaps of blooms. Unfortunately I did not get that amazing fragrance this rose is perhaps best known for, in fact, I got very little, if any. Is your Fresia fragrant, Teesh?

Sure is Jac, I wouldn't say it was the most fragrant but it does have a medium scent

Wonder what I did to cheese her off

Mine's in a pot though

Mine was in the ground and did really well; and I love yellow and would get another one, except the fragrance wasn’t there for me. This year I planted golden orangey-yellow Valencia, and it’s a gigantic stunner with a great fragrance.

Ooh you'll have to post some photos!! We are running out of room for roses We have about 60 now and that's why some are in pots. I am eyeing off the lawn lol

What’s the lawn doing for you, Teesh? Is a waste of space! Imagine how great all those beautiful reds would look there instead. Will just go and water my garden now, and post some Valencia pics this p.m.

The lawn is currently a horrid brown colour. And I am sure I can convince my husband to let me plant more hahahahaha

That should be so easy – do it now, whilst the lawn is ugly and brown. Just look really sad and point out how it spoils the whole look, and sigh.

He said we could put a new garden in out the back but it doesn't get much sun. Only afternoon sun for a little bit, so if anyone knows of any roses that don't like too much sun I would love to know what they are

Sun and shade here in QLD don’t mean the same as elsewhere. The sun here has a lot of strength even in “shade”, as light is reflected of all surfaces and reaches where it looks shady; that’s why we can still get burned in shade and on cloudy days.

When I ran out of space in my old garden and had no choice, but to start planting roses in shadier positions, I found they were still doing nicely. However, I noticed they didn’t grow quite as fast as others. Maybe that’s not a bad thing here where many of them can get a bit too big.

Julia’s Rose is one that I think should be planted in full, not even dappled shade here, because it burns very quickly in summer. I really like it a lot, because of its beautiful colour, but there’s next to no fragrance. It’s not out yet, but here’s an old photo:
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Ooh what a pretty colour Jac. I started off with really bright reds, worked my way to different colours this year and brought my first peach one a month ago. And I now really want another white one, I only have one.