What's the verdict on Honeyberries...are they tasty?

Mine wake up end of Feb and bloom like maybe 2nd week in March and I don’t have a pollenator problem. What varieties do you have? Some varieties don’t pollenate each other.

UoS has a pollen chart online for theirs

aurora and tundra. i do have some fruit set, but just very little. the tundra especially had like 0. it had aobout 50+ flowers and im counting maybe 4 fruit

i am a little suspicious of tundra being mislabled, its fruit has always been sooooo small.

My Aurora pollinates both my indigo gem and my tundra because indigo gem and tundra can’t pollinate each other. And I definitely got a good set on both of them. How old are they? Aurora does wake up a few days after tundra for me. But they all seem to bloom for awhile. They also even got snowed on this year while blooming.

they were both flowering at once. this is their 3rd year, so maybe just not mature enough? but again lots of flowers

1 Like

Weird. My Aurora is 2 years in ground, and the other 2 are 3 in ground.

My haskap typically give me a little bit of fruit the initial year of planting (planting 1yr olds in 1G pots), and ramp up production every year after. The bare-root haskap plugs that I have purchased don’t produce for me the initial year of planting. However, I have only tried bare root from one supplier thus far.

2 Likes

are you in town or rural? Bumbles seem to do most of my pollinating, Some more urban areas spray for insects quite aggressively and killing mosquitoes can also kill bees, if you dont have a local population of bumbles your haskap might have issues due to that, do you see them flying around your area?

1 Like

im pretty urban. I do have several carpenter bees living on my property but i didnt see them on the honeyberries at all. they live right next to them too and i saw them sort of bee-ing around them. but not on the flowers.

I normally have a large amount of different bees but this year has just been really scant. Not sure why.

I assume honeyberries are mostly pollinated by long tongue bees based on their shape, of which i normally have quite a lot. havent seen many besides the few carpenter bees, but theyre huge so idk if they do that

1 Like

ive seen quite a few hummingbirds on my honeyberries in the past and lots of bumbles.

hummingbirds are just hitting my area now, right on time with my trumpet honey suckle blooms

1 Like

mine will flower next week. we should see them then.

I typically have bumble bees and hummingbirds pollinating my haskap. I’m sure there are mason bees and other varied hoverflies, etc. Being in a colder zone, my haskap don’t flower until about the 1st or 2nd week of May, and they all tend to effectively overlap with their flowering period. It sounds late, but there are still snow banks through May and the average last frost date isn’t until about a week into June. Usually we get some snow while the flowers are out.

My haskap are all out in the prevailing wind to act as a snow catch, so the winds could dissuade some of my pollinators, but I believe the fact that they are among the earliest nectar sources in the area, aside from willows and crocus, and all overlap with flowering, effectively makes them a prime target for activity.

3 Likes

Hummingbirds pollinating honeyberries? That’s amazing :slight_smile: There’s a large hummingbird population in my 9a that seems to live cozy lives as they don’t care about almost any of our flowers (crocosmia is one notable exception) as there are feeders and insects everywhere.

My earliest honeyberry to bloom is surprisingly Boreal Blizzard in early March, a couple weeks before my early blooming varieties (Boreal Beauty and Aurora bloom much later too). It seems to have more difficulty setting fruit as only a few bumblebee queens are out this early (days barely hit 50F at that point). All the other varieties have no issues as there’s actually insects out at that point.

2 Likes

That’s what the beginning of May is here barely 50F. I think today was 3C as a high, which is like 40F?

Photo is May 18, 2025

9 Likes

do you mind if I share this picture on facebook?

1 Like

I don’t mind. Feel free. Location is Manitoba, Canada if any of the Facebookers are interested.

2 Likes

my indigo gem/ treat are starting to leaf out. aurora, honeybee, and the boreals are starting to wake as well.

2 Likes

Five of my six haskaps are leafed out and putting on new growth, even the ones that got munched by deer. The Indigo Gem accidentally got smashed by the wheelbarrow and hasn’t broke dormancy yet, I might have to replace that one. My two pawpaws also aren’t doing great, I might cull those and replace with a couple more haskaps.

2 Likes

How old are the pawpaw? They are massive drama queens for a year when you mess with their tap root

1 Like