I have 4 hives and have had as many as six in my 75ft sq backyard which is right in town with houses a driveway's width away on 2 sides. Check local ordinances and visit the local library for beekeeping books. There is also quite a bit of information on the internet about plants that honeybees like. A few that come to mind are any of the mints,oregano, dandelion, buckwheat,sunflowers. You can plant collards, leave them in the ground and they will bolt to seed the second year, producing pretty yellow flowers that bees really like. You can naturalize an area depending on where you live with plants like pussywillow, goldenrod,sweet white clover(not the typical short clover)milkweed, tansy,etc. here's an informative link good luck! Here is a link that might be useful: ftp://ftp-fc.sc.egov.usda.gov/WHMI/WEB/pdf/TechnicalLeaflets/NativePolinators.pdf

If you want honey bees but do not want to make the investment in time learning how to care for them and then doing so, your best bet as mentioned above is to get in contact with your local beekeepers club (look online). Club members are always looking for places to put new hives. You could probably work out an arrangement where you get the hives placed for free and maybe a jar or two of honey. The beekeeper would usually keep the bulk of the honey to help pay for the quite substantial costs of setting up the hives, maintenance and equipment. Whether in fact the bees help much with the fruit trees depends on what else is available when they are in bloom. Honey bees tend to be specific to certain plants: when they find one major supply of nectar or pollen they like, they concentrate their energies on that and ignore other sources. I have found that my bees are all over my stone fruit but tend to ignore pears, with apples somewhere in between. On the other hand, when major sources of nectar are not available, as in summer, the bees will be very effective pollinators in your vegetable garden -- especially for things like squash and cucumbers. (Though bumblebees do a good job on these too.) You can attract more native pollinators like bumbebees by planting flowering plants that attract them. One other option is to get mason orchard bees. These do not live in big colonies like honey bees. They are sold in tubes, which you place out in the orchard. They are only active for a few months of the year, when fruit trees are in bloom, and focus their energies on fruit trees and do not roam far from the available trees. (Honeybees can fly up to at least two miles from their hives.) Bee for bee they are much more efficient pollinators than honeybees, and they are much, much cheaper to get. You can look them up on google using key words like "orchard mason bee". Their main drawback is that they will not pollinate your vegetables and if you only have a few fruit trees nearby there may not be enough food for them to survive and build a sustainable population.

"My vegetable garden sometimes includes eggplants, melons, tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, squash and beans and all need pollinators." Actually none of those require pollinators :-) They are either wind pollinated or self pollinated. As are all greens and root or tuberous vegetables. But I do applaude your encouragement of early pollinators like the mason bees. They are present and active well before honey or bumble bees so are vital to the success of early flowering fruit trees and berries, although have too short of a lifespan (at only 4-6 weeks) to be very beneficial for a typical veggie garden.

Oooh, these are great additions to the list! Keep 'em coming... Nicole -- That's a good point about the Rose of Sharon pollen. When I initially started out planting for pollinators, I was only vaguely aware that bees would prefer some plants for nectar, but others for pollen, and some for both. Here's an interesting list from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pollen_sources The borage I have is from Botanical Interests. I planted a couple seed packets about nine years ago, and it STILL faithfully reseeds itself without fail every year on both the east and west sides of the fenced backyard. It seems to like the warm rock mulch especially, so I end up transplanting a bunch of seedlings every spring back into the beds. Deb -- Yeah, they really do love the catmint, don't they? I was a little worried mine had cross pollinated with the true catnip this past season, but the flowers just opened this week and they're still that pretty Walker's blue. (My catnip has white blooms.) Recent sightings: Mostly small local bees, Painted Admiral butterfly, Painted Lady, Field Checkerspot, a White Striped Black (new to the list) and some variety of cutworm caterpillar (future miller moth...?) that was relocated away from the herb garden seedlings. Oh, and not a pollinator but I also came across the largest jumping spider I've ever seen on the raspberry canes. About the size of my thumb! Still no honey bees in the yard, though. It's really weird...