Nectar vs pollen
The two things a flower offers a bee, and they do completely different jobs. Rating a plant on one alone is the commonest error in bee-friendly gardening advice.
Which to choose
Not a choice — a garden needs both, at the right times. Prioritise pollen in early spring, when it is the binding constraint. Prioritise nectar in the summer dearth. And check plant lists for whether they distinguish the two: one that does not is not telling you what you need to know.
Why these get compared
Bee-friendly plant lists almost always collapse these into a single score, which produces advice that is wrong in both directions — dismissing poppies, and overrating plants that offer nectar in a tube nothing can reach.
Where they differ
| Axis | Nectar | Pollen | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | A sugar solution secreted by the flower as a reward | The plant's male gametes, collected as food | Nectar is a payment. Pollen is both the plant's reproductive material and the bee's protein source. |
| What the bee uses it for | Fuel for adults; converted into honey for storage | Protein for larvae; a colony's entire brood is built from it | Adults run on nectar; larvae are made of pollen. |
| When it is limiting | Summer dearth, drought | Early spring above all | A queen founding a colony in February needs pollen within days. Nectar alone will not do. |
| Plants offering only one | Some flowers offer nectar and little pollen | Poppies, dog rose, St John's wort, California poppy offer pollen and no nectar at all | This is why the two are rated separately in this catalogue. A single score would call poppies worthless. |
| What it becomes | Honey | Bee bread — fermented and stored in cells | Pollen is stored differently and much less of it, because it does not keep the way honey does. |
| Effect on honey | Everything — flavour, colour, texture | Small traces, which are what pollen analysis reads | Pollen in honey is incidental. It is also what allows a honey's floral origin to be verified. |
Where the difference is overstated
Nothing here is overstated. The commoner error is understating the distinction by collapsing it, which is what almost every bee-friendly plant label does.
Sources
- Assessment Report on Pollinators, Pollination and Food Production — Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) (2016) · Systematic review Link
- Field Guide to the Bees of Great Britain and Ireland — Bloomsbury (2015) · Field guide
- The Biology of the Honey Bee — Harvard University Press (1987) · Textbook
How sources are selected and weighted is set out in the sources and evidence policy.