Ajwain

Value to bees

Nectar

High

Pollen

High

As a honey crop

Minor honey crop — a surplus only locally or occasionally

Which bees, and why

An umbel is a table of hundreds of minute flowers with fully exposed nectaries, so no tongue length is required at all — this is the most accessible flower architecture there is, and it feeds small wild bees and hoverflies alongside the managed colonies.

Worth knowing

One of the more useful spice-crop flows in northwestern India, and valuable for its timing as much as its volume.

Flowering

In flower

January to March (northern hemisphere)

A winter-sown rabi crop, so it flowers in the cool dry season when Indian colonies most need a flow.

When nectar flows

Free-flowing and easy of access, and the crop is grown densely enough to give a genuine surplus where it is a regional staple.

What it does to the honey

Carries a distinct thyme-and-caraway aromatic edge from the plant's thymol content, over a light amber body.

Growing it

Conditions

Full sun on light well-drained soil, with warmth and low humidity.

Size

0.6-0.9 m.

Native range

Probably the eastern Mediterranean and Egypt, cultivated for millennia across Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India.

Suits

Small gardens, Containers and window boxes, Farm scale

• Sown direct in a warm season and treated as a fast annual.
• Let a proportion of a culinary planting run to flower — the seed crop and the bee value are the same event.

What it looks like

A slender feathery-leaved annual carrying compound umbels of tiny white flowers, followed by ridged aromatic seeds that smell strongly of thyme.