Almond

Value to bees

Nectar

Very high

Pollen

Very high

As a honey crop

Minor honey crop — a surplus only locally or occasionally

Which bees, and why

The most concentrated managed pollination event in world agriculture. The scale creates real problems — colonies from across a continent mixing in one valley is an efficient way to move disease, and the almond bloom is followed each year by measurable losses. Blue orchard bees are increasingly deployed alongside honey bees because they fly in the cool damp weather almond flowering often brings.

Open cup-shaped flowers with fully exposed nectar and pollen, usable by every bee.

Worth knowing

Top-rated for both, at the single most valuable moment of the year for a colony coming out of winter. That is precisely why the pollination market exists.

Flowering

In flower

February to March (northern hemisphere)

Very early — the first substantial tree flow of the northern year, and vulnerable to frost and rain in a way that makes it a commercial emergency rather than an inconvenience.

When nectar flows

Copious nectar and abundant pollen, at a point in the year when almost nothing else is open. Cold or wet weather during the bloom prevents bees flying and can cost a grower the crop outright.

Year-to-year variation

Reliable in flower and rarely a honey surplus — the flow arrives when colonies are at their weakest after winter transport, and is generally left on the hives as build-up feed.

What it does to the honey

Almond nectar produces a distinctly bitter amber honey with a marzipan aroma — one of very few honeys where bitterness arrives before sweetness.

Growing it

Conditions

Full sun, free-draining soil, and a warm dry summer. It flowers so early that frost is the limiting factor in most temperate climates.

Size

4-10 m.

Native range

Central and southwest Asia, cultivated around the Mediterranean for millennia and now grown at vast scale in California.

Suits

Small gardens, Large gardens, Orchard

• Plant it for the blossom rather than the nuts in most of northern Europe — it flowers reliably and sets fruit rarely.
• Two varieties are needed for a crop; almond is largely self-incompatible.
• Susceptible to peach leaf curl in wet springs, which is the usual reason a garden almond looks miserable by June.

What it looks like

A small spreading tree flowering on bare wood in late winter, in a mass of pale pink or white five-petalled blossom, followed by narrow leaves and the grey velvety fruit that splits to release the nut.