Angico

Value to bees

Nectar

High

Pollen

High

As a honey crop

Major honey crop — yields a surplus in good years

Which bees, and why

Globular heads of exposed stamens, worked by Africanized honey bees and by the native stingless bees kept across the region — the same tree supplying two parallel beekeeping systems.

Worth knowing

A principal source of the caatinga honey that northeastern Brazil exports in quantity, much of it organic-certified.

Flowering

In flower

September to November (southern hemisphere)

Flowering ahead of the rains, which is when the caatinga honey year begins.

When nectar flows

Generous, and the tree's size and abundance make it a landscape-scale flow across the Brazilian northeast.

Year-to-year variation

Tied to the timing of the rains. The caatinga is semi-arid and a failed rainy season removes the following year's flow.

What it does to the honey

Gives a mid to dark amber honey with a resinous, faintly smoky character over a caramel body.

Growing it

Conditions

Full sun in a seasonally dry tropical climate on poor stony soil.

Size

10-20 m.

Native range

Seasonally dry forests of Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay, Peru and northern Argentina.

Suits

Farm scale

• Valued for timber and tannin as well as for honey.
• Not a garden tree outside the seasonally dry neotropics.

What it looks like

A tall tree with rough dark bark, fine bipinnate foliage and abundant cream-white globular flower heads carried on the bare or nearly bare branches.