Honey-bearing plants are called beekeeping plants. They have developed honey-bearing flowers of various colors and scents. Due to their attractive appearance and smell, they attract insects, including bees. The honey plant has a long flowering period. Provides bees with nutrients for the production of honey.
Do you know what plants are honey-bearing? If you have an apiary nearby, it is worth sowing seeds of honey flowers in your garden.Every beekeeper will be grateful to you for this. Flowery meadows are becoming more and more popular in Poland. Honey-bearing plants are sown on them, from which the bees will be able to collect nectar, pollen or honeydew. Do you want to have honey plants in your garden? Examples of species for breeding can be found in the text below.
Contents:
- Honey plants: what are they?
- Honey plants: trees
- Honey plants: shrubs
- Honey plants: herbs
Honey plants: what are they?
Honey plants have long and intensely flowering flowers. They are used by bees to attract these insects. The essence of the process is to provide useful insects with nutrients.Honey flowers are a source of raw material for honey production for bees.
Nectar-producing plants provide nectar in their flowers, and honeydew plants on leaves and shoots. Honey-bearing plants for bees are also pollen-bearing species. Bees collect: nectar, honeydew and pollen. Based on these ingredients, they produce honey.
Honey plants are useful for bees, but also decorative for humans. Flower meadows look beautiful, even becoming a tourist attraction. In the gardens, honey flowers delight with a variety of colors, shapes and fragrances. Plants used in herbal medicine are also valuable. Honey-bearing plants can also decorate balconies, terraces and gazebos.
Due to intensive human activity, species biodiversity is destroyed. Protected plants will die completely over time. The developing industry and the use of plant protection products - pesticides, especially during the flowering of plants, contribute to the extinction of entire bee swarms, as well as other pollinating insects. Bees are extremely vulnerable. This situation is also a threat to humans. Insects are required to pollinate most plants. Without them, vegetables, fruits and flowers would cease to exist.
For bees to live, you need to grow honey plants in your garden.It is good to create special flower meadows for them and build houses for insects. In order to improve the condition of the environment and increase the population of beneficial insects, it is worth paying attention to the time of spraying. It is best to do them outside the flowering period, and also in the evening, when the bees are already in the hive.
Honey plants: trees
Honey plants are also trees. They are characterized by different honey and pollen yields. The honey-bearing trees include:rowan, catalpa, horse chestnut, maple: sycamore, field and common, linden: small-leaved and broad-leaved, black locust, willow and domestic plum.
Small-leaved linden is the most honey-bearing tree. However, it is sensitive to weather conditions. The production of large amounts of nectar is not conducive to drought, winds and cold weather. The flowers appear in the second half of June and are valuable to bees. Moreover, they are pharmaceutical raw materials with diaphoretic and antipyretic properties.Linden honey also exhibits such healing properties. Rowan, maples and willow have the highest pollen yields among the trees. They range from 45 to 50 kg / ha.
In early spring, the most beneficial for bees are flowering fruit trees. They allow the bee swarm to be nourished after the winter. The highest yield is obtained when the hives are located near the orchards. House plum blooms at the earliest - in March and April. Its honey yield is 10 kg / ha. Apple trees bloom in May and June, providing 20 kg / ha of nectar. Cherry has a honey yield within 40 kg / ha.
It is worth joining the group of bee friends! It is thanks to bees that many plants and animal species can survive.
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Honey plants: shrubs
Honey plants in the garden and in the vicinity of meadows also include shrubs and shrubs. These include the following species:barberry, bird cherry, hawthorn, privet, southern chrysanthemum, buckthorn, raspberry, black currant, rose and white snowballVery high honey yield - 190 kg / ha, has the last one.The snowball is a frost-resistant species and can withstand droughts easily. Hedges are made of it.
Raspberry blooms wild every two years. It achieves efficiency from 50-200 kg / ha. The species grown in the garden has flowers every year. The honey yield is greater, it amounts to 150-200 kg / ha. A late use for bees is the heather flowering from August to October. The wetter the soil, the more nectar you get. Heather bushes grow in the forest and on the edges of meadows. They can also be grown in the rock garden and in pots on the balcony.
Honey plants: herbs
Honey plants are mostly herbs. Various species of honey flowers can be found in wild meadows, forests, but also in home gardens and balconies. They delight with the colors and shapes of the inflorescences. Most of them smell beautiful, thanks to which they attract useful insects. They bloom for a long time. Often, when some plants wither, flowers appear on other plants.This allows for the continuous availability of raw materials for honey production, from spring to autumn.
There is a lot of herbaceous honey plants. The most popular are:blue phacelia, buckwheat, borage, catnip, white melilot, clover, alfalfa, dandelion, goldenrod, cornflower, field mange, rape, mint, lemon balm, thyme, goldenrod, thistle, primrose, vetch and comfrey.
Among herbaceous plants, the greatest honey yield is found in:
- cornflower (300 kg / ha),
- common buckwheat (300 kg / ha),
- hyssop (400 kg / ha),
- white light (200 kg / ha),
- common loosestrife (200 kg / ha),
- common maroon - oregano (500 kg / ha),
- gypsophila (300 kg / ha),
- long-leaved mint (400-600 kg / ha),
- flat-leaved St. Nicholas (700 kg / ha),
- white clover (300 - 600 kg / ha),
- Spherical Echinacea (500 kg / ha),
- constrictor knotweed (350 kg / ha),
- district sage (300 kg / ha),
- common luck (300 kg / ha),
- Jerusalem artichoke (700 kg / ha),
- Common Echinacea (400 kg / ha).
When mowing, it is a good idea to leave clumps of herbaceous plants. Thanks to the fact that they will remain on the lawn and meadow, the bees will have more raw material for the production of honey. Caring for honey plants in the garden is very easy. Most of them are considered weeds that grow in all conditions.
Which honey plants to choose for dry soils?
It is difficult to answer this question unequivocally, because when choosing plants for the garden, we should always take into account the role and function of the site on which they will be sown.We will adopt different selection criteria when creating a rustic bed, a naturalistic lawn or sowing roadside areas. A lot also depends on whether we want to supplement the existing flower bed with individual plants or design something completely new to reflect the natural flower beds as much as possible. Honey plants that work well on dry, sandy soils are, for example, Cornflower, St. John's wort, Blue phacelia, Hyssop, Echinacea, White clover, Narrow-leaved lavender, European lily, Poppy field, White clover and / or medicinal plant, Borage Medicinal sage, Chrysanthemum, Common Chrysanthemum, Echinacea. As you can see for yourself, these plants differ in terms of their shape, size and ornamentation during flowering, therefore it is important to know their intended use already at the selection stage. I strongly encourage you to choose and plant plants with high honey yield, min. 300 kg / ha.
- says Dr. Eng. Tomasz Mróz
