Old canes should be thrown out, they invite problems. Sorry bees. I grew a number of flowers this year to attract beneficial insects. The more impressive from my observations is borage, wow the bees love them! The flowers are edible and I have been using them to decorate my salads, my wife even took a picture. I do most of the cooking. The plants just keep producing flowers. Not that attractive of a plant, but it most certainly draws the bees in. It's supposed to make tomatoes taste better, so it's growing next to my tomato plants. The plants are huge, give them space!

"Old canes provide...nesting sites", as in a pile of cut-down old canes? Yellow jackets or other ground-nesting wasps would be attracted to that. Not sure what bee would nest in erect uncut old canes.

We have had borage for a number of years. The sea holly plant next to the borage draws the most honeybees by far. Can't put that in a salad though, too bristly.

Cool on the sea holly, I'll have to find some! Well you can use borage leaves before they flower, but the leaves are rather bristly too! The flowers are good though! I'm going to try and candy some next week, easy to do!

Update:
I found 2 sea holly cultivars, thanks again for the tip.
I like to grow flowers. i add new flowers every year. So many extremely cool plants. I will be adding many highly scented flowers next year.

This post was edited by Drew51 on Fri, Jul 11, 14 at 1:03

Shazaam, I heard part of the same program, and what he said made sense to me. The little native bees probably would occupy the hollow canes.

It could be a problem for serious growers of raspberries, but there is no real reason I can see why a casual grower could not just choose to leave a few old stems available for the bees.

His comments regarding bare earth for tunneling bees also made sense. I am missing the few bumblebees I used to see in my garden. :o(

Most tutorials on growing raspberries even suggest to not even compost raspberry canes as they so attract problems. I would respectfully disagree that saving canes is anything but a bad idea. It is suggested to remove them from the grounds altogether. If composting is dangerous, just leaving them must be a ticket to disaster.

Elderberry stalks are hollow, they would probably make good bee homes too. Not dangerous to save. i grow elderberries too!

I have little bees who live in my rose canes :) The favorite bee rose I've found is bracteata. The bumblebees sleep on the stamens like pillows! Or they are drunk on the nectar, lol.

That one gets out of hand in warm climates, though. The bees who tunnel into my canes aren't picky, so a smaller rose would do, too. Leaf-cutter bees take parts of the leaves of roses also.

I have all sorts of bees. They love creeping charlie early on, and then nepeta and clover, ornamental sages, then they adore the anise hyssop when it blooms now through fall. Later, they love the sedums. They like a lot else, too, but those are always covered with them. I didn't realize there were so many kinds of bees until my gardens really got going :) My lawn is rampant with lovely clover, so I step on way too many all season, but I feel worse for them than the painful toes.

eta: I forgot that they flock to the lamb's ears flowers if you let those grow. They are so crazy about them I didn't cut them down until they looked awful. They came back really fast, so no need to wait (unless the bees won't let you cut them!)

This post was edited by meredith_e on Fri, Jul 11, 14 at 4:32

"The little native bees probably would occupy the hollow canes."

That was my impression, as well. I imagine it's like mason bee nesting boxes -- hollow tubes for solitary rather than hive nesting native bees. He didn't specify, but I was under the impression that he left the canes standing in the patch. Like with the nesting boxes for mason bees, I'm sure that there are lots of other ways to provide nesting habitat for bees, but I liked his idea and thought others might find it interesting too.

"The more impressive from my observations is borage, wow the bees love them! "

No kidding. Borage is by far the most attractive plant for bees that I can ever recall growing. Plus, since it self seeds so effectively, there's always some popping up somewhere. I've also been impressed with comfrey (which is in the same family). The bell shaped flowers are less accessible than borage's flat flowers, but I've noticed that it attracts a lot of bumble bees.

Although sea holly won the honeybees over, borage has a much longer bloom period, and it was winning today, although nearby flowering trees got 99% of the bees.