Bluebell

Value to bees

Nectar

High

Pollen

High

As a honey crop

Minor honey crop — a surplus only locally or occasionally

Which bees, and why

Worked heavily by bumblebees, which handle the drooping bells easily, and by honey bees. Short-tongued bumblebees frequently bite through the base of the bell to rob the nectar, and honey bees then use the holes.

A drooping tubular bell that favours bees able to hang and reach, though the tube is short enough for honey bees to manage.

Worth knowing

Good for both, delivered at scale in the spring window, and an underrated contributor to April honey.

Flowering

In flower

April to May (northern hemisphere)

Three to four weeks, timed to the window between the woodland floor warming and the tree canopy closing over.

When nectar flows

Generous in a good bluebell wood, and enough that colonies can put on measurable weight during it.

Year-to-year variation

A genuine short flow where woodland is extensive, and never a named monofloral honey.

What it does to the honey

Contributes to spring multifloral honeys rather than producing a monofloral. Where bluebell dominates it adds a pale colour and a faintly green floral note.

Growing it

Conditions

Dappled shade, moist humus-rich woodland soil. It needs the leaf litter and the shade of deciduous trees.

Size

20-40 cm.

Native range

Western Europe, with the great majority of the world population in Britain.

Suits

Large gardens, Hedgerow, Orchard

• Plant the native species and check the label carefully. Spanish bluebell and the hybrid are vigorous, upright, unscented and hybridise with the native, which is the main threat to it in gardens and near woodland.
• Plant in the green after flowering rather than as dry bulbs.
• Never dig bulbs from the wild — it is illegal in Britain and pointless, since nursery stock establishes better.

What it looks like

Narrow strap leaves and a one-sided arching spike of narrow drooping violet-blue bells with strongly recurved tips and creamy-white pollen.