In Kansas the tall clovers are the main honey crop. Thats our one heavy flow every year except drought years.
That built in bT is just a huge risk. I have no doubt its playing a part.
Im very lucky to have my acre bordered by green space and neighbors who are organic. We barely even see each other through the fence lines, so spray is a bullet im able to dodge thankfully
My younger neighbors are planning for bees next year. I want to get started but i have so much other work to do i cannot give it enough time right now
I dont particularly want the golden chain trees (hate invasives) but there is a huge one from my neighbors property that grows over my barn. Not much i can do but im going to try to find out more. Casual search says bee friendly
Will look into a basswood. See if i can fit some.
I’ve tried to do constant pollinator food sources for our garden and there are lots of edibles that they seem to love.
The haskap are a big one, being so early. Always covered in bumble queens. Honey bees go nuts for the bachalors buttons and they are basically a weed. The Asparagus gets lots of honeybees too.
We have several chunks of the old shrub roses. They are continuos flower and watching the bees flail around in the flowers is always fun. Lavender is another almost continous one. Borage self seeds and keeps flowering. Nasteriums are another tasty and constant flower producer. The fall raspberries are good late summer flowers. Jerusalum artichoke has lovely, large flowers but can get a bit invasive if you don’t harvest it. Bee balm, of course. Day lilies. We also have decorative patches of aster, sedum and anemome for fall flowers, even if we don’t eat those. I dont worry as much about the fall supply since we get insane amounts of goldenrod everywhere here.
Asparagus huh? I’d never thought of that as bee food. Interesting.
It surprised me too but they seem really into it. It may be more for the pollen than the nectar (the ones on it all end up with big leg bundles of pollen) but it is very much the honey bees that swarm it, not so much the bumbles.
Thanks for cleaning that up Clark.
@Poorwolf
Any clover but red clover is great for some honey though tall yellow & white sweet clover are best. Red clover the florets are to deep for a honeybees tongue to reach it 95% of the time but bumblebee have no problem working red clover.
my grandmother used to send us to pick all types of clover to make her honey. she esp. liked the red clover.
I thought honey is made by bees not by grandma😝
at least where i live there were no honeybees until just recently and even then, they only survive the winter with a lot of help here. if you wanted honey 50 yrs. ago you paid dearly for it or you made it this way.
Very interesting, never know there is artificial way of making honey learning something new everyday
I was referring to the type bees make from clover during the primary honey flow.
sorry. got off topic a little.
They’re so pretty, Vincent. Is the flower buds on #4 picture edible?
Very pretty, Vincent.
I am not sure. It’s spider Daylily. A lot of yellow flowers Daylily are edible but extremely careful some of them cause upset stomach or diarrhea,
Citrina or Fulva cultivars are safe to eat. Below my citrina edible Daylily.
You like the ruffly ones!
Obviously you’ve either spent some good money for those…or have nice friends!
Some of the best I would say. And there are over 80,000 named ones now!
Those are amazing, Vincent! (Though I have to admit I’m rather partial to the old-school orange ones myself.)