This doesn’t take a lot of time, but it does take a gentle touch, especially if the roots of all your cuttings are tangled up. With bee health being a big focus world wide we highly recommend one of these plants in your garden.Enter your e-mail address to receive our newsletterEnter your e-mail address to receive our newsletterEmail address already subscribed. It will live for years in a sunny window, or you can grow it outside for a season. ), James E. Simon, Mario R. Morales, Winthrop B. Phippen, Roberto Fontes Vieira, and Zhigang Hao It can be grown in USDA zones 3-10. I don’t want to cut off what little flower is left and leave the bees with nothing.They like to be pruned. The bottom 1-3 nodes will be underwater, so use your fingernails or scissors to gently snip off the leaves and buds just around those nodes. Gently sprinkle more soil on top of the roots until you fill the pot. Pack the soil down with your fingers just a little bit to stabilize the cutting, and water lightly.Over the next 1-2 weeks, keep your potted-up cuttings in a sunny spot outside. The clock stops ticking at the flowering stage of its life. Flowers are mauve on long stalks attracting bees to your garden. Rest the roots a single cutting on top of that soil, and don’t worry about how the roots fall into place. I have found recently that the anise hyssop is an excellent attraction for bees and now for late season they are so happy around my pineapple sage.To assist the health of the cuttings, one can add an airstone to oxygenate the water. Amend the soil with well-rotted organic compost or manure a month prior to sowing. Use leaves as you would with common basil in cooking and teas. These blooms are very good at attracting bees and other pollinators. African Blue Basil is a perennial Basil growing to 80cm high having green leaves with splashes of purple. My tutorial below is for to African blue basil and includes lots of photos and tips specific to this type of basil.4-inch diameter pot or similar size container (with drainage holes)Study your mother plant to find a branch to remove that will improve the health or shape of the mother and provide several good cuttings. African Blue basil (Ocimum kilimandscharicum x basilicum Dark Opal) is a sterile hybrid of an East African camphor basil and a standard garden variety called Dark Opal. “The amount of forage that bees have access to is directly related to honey production and hive health.” Hilary’s advice, along with the myriad things she has taught me about bees, got me to reimagine planting flowers; seeds in hand, I can see myself as a chef to the bees, ready to serve up the best flowers. For new gardeners out there, propagation from cuttings is a cloning a technique, a way to grow lots of new plants from an existing plant, that works especially well for anything in the mint family—like basil.A cutting will sprout roots directly from the stem if placed in water and given the right conditions. Water gently every other day or so. African Blue basil (Ocimum kilimandscharicum x basilicum “Dark Opal”) is a sterile hybrid of an East African camphor basil and a standard garden variety called Dark Opal. Flowers are mauve on long stalks attracting bees to your garden. I wonder if you could propagate it indoors and then plant it outside in the spring.I too am a beekeeper and I have been growing African Basil for 3 years now. Our lovely Sydney neighbour Mette gifted us an African Blue Basil plant (Ocimum kilimandscharicum x basilicum ‘Dark Opal’), a strong fragrant perennial green and purple herb that grows 80-100cm high, flowers all year-round and will attract bees to your garden.Perennial basils, repel aphids, asparagus beetles, flies, mites, making them good companion plants for veggies like tomatoes, beans, and sweet peppers, as well as for fruit trees. Let the other leaves be, as those will continue to carry out photosynthesis and supply the cutting with energy to grow roots.Repeat steps 3-4 for as many cuttings as you want. Title. I like to remove branches from dense sections to encourage airflow or to prune off some weight on a really laden branch. It will flower all summer long attracting Australian native bees as well as the European honey bee to your garden. It also makes great cut flowers! In San Diego, where we can garden year round, African blue basil blooms every day of the year. Blue Spice basil, like other basil varieties, is a tender herb. Remove any that die; keep the water level up; change the water if it becomes discolored; and wait for roots to grow.Once you have a lot of roots (see photos), it’s time to the cuttings. This happened because African blue basil is a hybrid, a plant produced when two types of basil were crossed by a plant breeder. “The best way to help bees is to plant flowers,” says Hilary, when people want to know what they can do to help honey bees.