December
Plants in flower in December. A garden's value to bees is limited by its worst month rather than its best, so the list worth reading is the one for a month your own garden has nothing in.
44 records · flowering month
- MahoniaMahonia × mediaRated high rather than very high on volume, and it is arguably the most valuable plant in this catalogue anyway. A high-value plant in July competes with everything; a moderate one in January competes with nothing.
- MānukaLeptospermum scopariumA good nectar source during its brief flowering and of limited use outside it. A landscape of nothing but mānuka is a feast followed by a famine.
- EucalyptusEucalyptusProlific in both nectar and pollen when flowering, though the pollen of some species is nutritionally poor for honey bees, and colonies confined to a single eucalypt species can suffer over time despite abundant forage.
- Strawberry treeArbutus unedoValuable out of all proportion to its abundance, because of when it flowers. Late nectar lets colonies enter winter with fresh stores in a landscape that has otherwise shut down.
- SidrZiziphus spina-christiIn much of its range sidr is not merely a good forage plant but effectively the only one at that time of year, which makes it structurally critical rather than simply valuable.
- Winter honeysuckleLonicera fragrantissimaModerate ratings that punch far above their weight because of when they arrive. Nothing else that is easy to grow flowers so reliably in December and January.
- CalendulaCalendula officinalisModerate nectar and good pollen, delivered across an exceptionally long season including the shoulders of the year when little else is open. Its value is timing rather than volume.
- HelleboreHelleborusModerate nectar and good pollen at the point in the year when both are hardest to find. Rated by timing rather than by quantity.
- QuillayQuillaja saponariaA good summer nectar source in dry country, and one of relatively few substantial ones in central Chile.
- Dead-nettleLamiumGood nectar over an exceptionally long season, including the winter months when almost nothing else is available to a foraging bumblebee.
- GorseUlex europaeusZero nectar and top-rated pollen, available in midwinter. Alongside hazel and poppy it is the clearest argument for rating the two separately.
- Christmas boxSarcococca confusaModerate ratings that count for a great deal because they arrive in January, in dry shade, where the alternatives are nothing.
- Winter viburnumViburnum × bodnantenseModerate nectar and little pollen, delivered across the longest winter flowering window of any common garden shrub.
- Witch hazelHamamelis × intermediaModerate on both counts and valuable entirely because of when it arrives. In its native range it is pollinated partly by winter-active moths.
- KanukaKunzea ericoidesAn excellent nectar and pollen source across the New Zealand summer.
- RewarewaKnightia excelsaA heavy nectar source in native forest, and an important one for the New Zealand forest bird community as well as for bees.
- PohutukawaMetrosideros excelsaA heavy summer nectar and pollen source on coasts with few alternatives.
- JarrahEucalyptus marginataA major nectar and pollen source in years when it flowers heavily.
- Prickly boxBursaria spinosaAn excellent summer nectar and pollen source, and among the most heavily visited plants in southeastern Australia.
- BottlebrushMelaleuca citrinaAn excellent nectar and pollen source with pollen presented openly on exposed stamens.
- LoquatEriobotrya japonicaAn outstanding winter nectar and pollen source in subtropical climates, and correspondingly valuable.
- TeaCamellia sinensisA good late nectar and pollen source, arriving when the season is otherwise closing.
- ChiuriDiploknema butyraceaA valuable winter nectar source in the Himalayan mid-hills, where alternatives are scarce.
- BaobabAdansonia digitataA good nectar and pollen source for the brief period the flowers are open.
- MopaneColophospermum mopaneModest floral nectar and a substantial honeydew resource, which is the reason the woodland supports beekeeping at all.
- CashewAnacardium occidentaleA good dry-season nectar and pollen source across the tropics.
- Winter-flowering cherryPrunus x subhirtellaModest in volume and disproportionately valuable in timing — this is a plant whose worth is entirely about when it flowers.
- Winter clematisClematis cirrhosaModest in volume and valuable specifically for its timing.
- Hardy cyclamenCyclamen coumModest in volume and valuable in timing, covering the two thinnest points in the garden year.
- Greek heathErica manipulifloraThe most important autumn forage across much of the Aegean, and the reason colonies there can be wintered without heavy feeding.
- TulsiOcimum tenuiflorumA dependable post-monsoon source in Indian apiaries, and one of the few whose cultivated area is driven by religious and medicinal use rather than by agriculture.
- MoringaMoringa oleiferaA dependable year-round trickle rather than a flow, which in a dryland landscape is worth more than its volume suggests.
- Oil-tea camelliaCamellia oleiferaEnormous in volume and awkward in practice: the nectar contains oligosaccharides that honey bees digest poorly, and colonies working it heavily can suffer brood problems and adult mortality.
- Coconut palmCocos nuciferaThe most reliable background forage across much of the coastal tropics, precisely because it never stops. Coastal apiaries frequently rest on it between the seasonal flows.
- Sweet thornVachellia karrooA major southern African honey crop and, in many districts, the single most important source there is.
- Oil palmElaeis guineensisA heavy year-round pollen source and a poor nectar one, which makes plantation apiaries protein-rich and carbohydrate-poor — a genuine management problem rather than a technicality.
- Spanish needleBidens albaAmong the most important sources in Florida beekeeping, and the one that carries colonies between the citrus, palmetto and gallberry flows.
- ManzanitaArctostaphylos speciesThe critical winter and early-spring source across Californian chaparral, feeding colonies through the build-up towards almond pollination.
- XtabentúnTurbina corymbosaA short intense morning flow across the Yucatán scrub, worked by both honey bees and the region's managed stingless bees.
- TepezcohuiteMimosa tenuifloraA major dry-season source in Chiapas and in the Brazilian caatinga, and one that increases rather than decreases with land clearance — which is an uncomfortable thing to be able to say about a honey plant.
- MandacaruCereus jamacaruA minor nectar source and a substantial early-morning pollen one, valuable in a landscape where the dry season leaves very little.
- StringybarkEucalyptus macrorhyncha and related speciesOne of the mainstays of Australian commercial honey production, valued for both a heavy nectar flow and good pollen.
- PaperbarkMelaleuca speciesA reliable coastal and wetland flow across eastern Australia, and valuable partly because it occupies ground the drier eucalypts do not.
- TowaiWeinmannia silvicolaThe first native forest crop of the northern New Zealand season, and one that is increasingly marketed on its own terms rather than blended.
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