HoneyHQ

Myrtle family plants for bees

Eucalyptus, mānuka, pōhutukawa and jarrah. The family that produces most of the southern hemisphere's honey and almost none of Europe's.

Myrtaceae · 11 plants in the catalogue · 9 bee relationships

Why this family matters

Myrtaceae flowers dispense with petals as the visual element and use a dense brush of stamens instead — which is why a eucalyptus or bottlebrush flower looks like a shaving brush. That structure holds copious accessible nectar and enormous quantities of pollen, and the trees flower in the quantity only a forest canopy can manage. This is the family behind Australian and New Zealand beekeeping in its entirety, and behind mānuka honey, whose dihydroxyacetone-derived methylglyoxal content makes it the most studied and most faked honey in world trade.

When it flowers

Southern-hemisphere timing, which the calendar on this site records honestly rather than translating. Mānuka and pōhutukawa flower November to January — the New Zealand summer — kanuka November to February, and jarrah September to January. Eucalyptus as a genus flowers somewhere in every month, which is why Australian beekeeping can be a year-round operation.

Which bees it serves

In their native ranges these trees are worked by birds and by native stingless and solitary bees as much as by introduced honey bees. Mānuka's economic significance has made its flowering window one of the most closely tracked events in commercial beekeeping anywhere.

Worth knowing before you plant it

Several eucalypts are seriously invasive outside their native range, and mānuka is a managed crop rather than a garden plant in most of the world. This is a family to understand rather than to plant in a northern European border.

Myrtle family plants in the catalogue

What this group covers

12 of 12 months have something in flower. Nectar and pollen are counted separately and a month counts only where at least one plant offers that resource at moderate value or better — a plant in flower is not the same as a plant worth visiting.

Flowering, nectar and pollen coverage by month for this group
MonthIn flowerNectarPollen
January8YesYes
February4YesYes
March3YesYes
April2YesYes
May4YesYes
June4YesYes
July4YesYes
August3YesYes
September3YesYes
October4YesYes
November7YesYes
December8YesYes

Check these against your region before planting

3 plants in this group carry an invasiveness or legal restriction note somewhere in the world: Mānuka, Eucalyptus, Niaouli. HoneyHQ does not know where you are and will not guess, so it flags rather than filters.

Bees these plants are recorded with

Taken from the relationships on each plant record. These are the well-attested associations rather than an exhaustive list of visitors, so treat the number as a floor.

Honeys from these plants

Other families

Plan with these

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