Hi guys and girls from central Otago 👋 got a bit of a surprise when I checked my hive yesterday (19th September) and my bee's are bringing in nectar 😳 bit of gorse pollen too but mostly nectar and I have no idea what it could be? I've been for a walk in the area I've seen them flying towards but I can't find anything. Willow catkins are still developing, and there's apricot blossom but it's only two trees about a kilometer distant, none of the other fruit trees are in blossom yet but are getting closer and I'm totally stumped. Anyone got any ideas?
Err where's that nectar coming from 😳
- Thread starter jos@centalotago
- Start date
kowhai was in flower down your way last week . If the honey tasts like chemicals thats it .
Any Five Finger or Fuchsia close by? That's flowering well down here in Southland and the bees love it.
No nothing like that here, it's pretty open and dry. I've got orchards inside the four kilometers of my bee's, but only apricot and almond blossom, peach is starting to open and plum is getting close too, Cherry isn't flowering close to the apairy, my neighbors have a tiny cherry block with a couple of apricot trees, so it's not that. Dynamite or cracking willow catkins just opened on the River banks properly today so it's not that either, grey willow is about a week away. Predominantly my area is thyme with a bit of wild budlier in a quarry pretty close but that's weeks away yet. I'm blowed if I know what it is😅
Next time I stick my nose in the colony I'll try it, but Ive only ever seen one kowhai close and that's at my neighbors place they have a tree
Maybe it's gorse thorn honey 😂 I'm starting to wonder if someone's hung sugar water feeders in the trees for the odd tuis and bellbirds that overwinter around here and I have absolutely no idea what they're eating to survive winter here but we have a small handful of nectar feeding birds, and my bee's are ripping sugar water feeders off😅that must blend well with privit
thats actually surprising! maybe its early wildflowers like dandelions or clover could be blooming unnoticed? then again it could be, as someone said kōwhai or even early-blooming manuka.. gorse can offer both pollen and nectar, may be flowering in sheltered spots? Microclimates or nearby gardens may have early-blooming plants like apricots, rosemary, or ornamental flowers.. And maybe your little guys are bringing in nectar from much farther than you think
Actually I figured it out with a few visits to the area the bee's were foraging. The nectar producing plant is sycamore tree which grows wild in patches on the River banks. Manuka doesn't grow here, in my region of central Otago, kowhai does though
Sycamore is an excellent early nectar source, the bees do very well in it and in Europe beekeeper seek out place where there's sycamore growing.
Sycamore is also one of the banes of my life...seedlings !
Yeah they're pretty bad for seedlings this year in our area and I'm guessing next year too be because the trees are thick with flowers, I'm guessing because of the heavy early spring rain and then warm spell. The bee's are hard on it though. I've had to super a hive already because of it, nice problem 😂 but I've also been spending the last week in one of the hillside thyme blocks pulling sycamore seedlings out so it doesn't get established up there and it's like a carpet in some places, especially in the control corridor we have where we let them grow and coppice them to keep the sycamore under control
It is hit and miss here but this year is perfect weather conditions, a lot of early spring rain and snow and then warm temperatures since which is why nobody seemed to know where the nectar flow was coming from 😳 and everyone is pleasantly surprised in my area that has bee's 👍 it's usually a small contribution of nectar I'm told but not this year 😁 interesting about it being a desirable plant in Europe, where in Europe do they have sycamore abundant enough to put colonies on it?
It's abundant in Germany, where I come from, but also other countries. Mainly a roadside tree and in mixed forests, when we had a few hives over there they always did very well on it. I still look for sycamore trees over here when looking for sites, old house sites are great for it!
It grows wild in Otago, in Dunedin it's considered a noxious introduced plant because it's so prolific when it gets established in the green belt (which is a corridor of native vegetation that runs through the hill suburbs), and if allowed to get to any size it wipes out competition plants which is a disaster in a native block. I worked for a weed spray crew In Dunedin and one of the council contracts was checking the greenbelt for sycamore and either digging it out or cutting it down and spraying and marking the stump. In central Otago where I live now there's a large belt of it growing along a old gold miners bullock track, I coppice control it and I don't let it spread out from there because it wipes out huge patches of thyme and elderberry so I weed seedlings out by hand if they escape from the bullock track😅
Gorse has wonderful pollen but I have never seen nectar come from it. I have heard South Island beekeepers talking about a nectar flow from this plant but I find it very hard to believe. Maybe it's a climate thing but I have had many hives over the years and areas from the coast to right up in the cold mountains and have never seen anything come from it.
The flow has almost stopped in Hamilton. Hopefully more to come soon. Bees are not too busy at the moment.
Had a good heavy flow all the way till first week of December and not much after that this year.
Hives are very strong and just waiting on another flow if it happens.
Have extracted most of what they had brought in till now.
Had a good heavy flow all the way till first week of December and not much after that this year.
Hives are very strong and just waiting on another flow if it happens.
Have extracted most of what they had brought in till now.
Yeah, our thyme honey flow shut down but we are getting a little still coming in from a few things like vipers bugloss, st John's wort and mullein. Just had a couple of days of decent rain which is awesome so that will boost wildflower nectar. I'm trying to get my colonies to really pack away stores for winter and next year's spring building because I had to get them drawing so much comb this year so no extracting except about ten frames, because I want the comb for another colony and a few neighbors have asked for a jar of honey but most of it I'll feed back to the colonies👍👋
I saw mention of elderberry which I have a very old tree of. It's managed to germinate and grows so quick that missing it means it reaches a metre very fast.
My Pohutukawa trees seem to have flowered late but seen others larger and older running to schedule. My father used my plants to predict and time his bee work including the magnolia.
So I'm going to hazard a guess for late but long summer with warm weather into mid to late May, even June.
I doubt my accuracy but as El Nino ENSO has apparently returned (also waiting for the M.J. Oscillation to be predicted) the Met Service is not fairing well
My Pohutukawa trees seem to have flowered late but seen others larger and older running to schedule. My father used my plants to predict and time his bee work including the magnolia.
So I'm going to hazard a guess for late but long summer with warm weather into mid to late May, even June.
I doubt my accuracy but as El Nino ENSO has apparently returned (also waiting for the M.J. Oscillation to be predicted) the Met Service is not fairing well
Hi from central Otago 👋 Elderberry grows prolifically here especially in waste areas and we have a very heavy fruit set this year on them. No Pohutukawa though, little too cold for them here. It's been a fantastic year to start back in beekeeping, a lot of nectar and pollen coming in so it's helped with building colonies and getting comb drawn which is fantastic. I managed to pull two frames of the sycamore honey and extract them last week, along with four frames of thyme honey on plastic frames. The sycamore honey is very dark, and very sweet, I can see why it's popular. The thyme honey was a fantastic golden color and had a few other things mixed into it, elderberry being one, still strong but not as harsh as pure thyme honey. I gave a few jars away but fed most of it back to the bees( I'm personally not fussed about the plastic frames and wanted them out of my colonies, but the comb didn't go to waste, I put it into a nuc colony of a hobbyist I'm helping who likes plastic frames and desperately needs drawn comb 😅)