Major honey crop
90 records
Plants that fill a super in a good year. Almost all of them are trees or field-scale crops, because a surplus needs flowering volume in one place rather than quality per flower.
Plants by honey crop status
A separate axis from forage value, and the distinction beekeepers care about most. A plant can be excellent for bees and never fill a super, because it is too sparse, too brief, or flowers when the colony eats everything it collects. Borage feeds bees superbly and rarely yields outside a planted field.
4 groups · 296 records in the catalogue
Minor honey crop
87 records
A surplus locally or occasionally. Frequently a matter of density: the same plant that yields nothing in a garden yields a crop where it covers a hillside.
Feeds the colony but rarely yields a surplus
46 records
Feeds the colony and rarely yields a surplus. This is not a criticism — a plant that keeps bees alive through a gap is doing something a honey crop cannot.
Not a honey source
73 records
No harvestable honey, and frequently no nectar at all. Gorse, poppies and several others offer pollen alone, which feeds brood rather than filling jars.