Heather

Value to bees

Nectar

Very high

Pollen

High

As a honey crop

Major honey crop — yields a surplus in good years

Which bees, and why

Heavily worked in the short window, by honey bees moved onto the moors and by a distinctive community of heathland bumblebees and solitary bees that depend on it.

Flowering

Typically in flower

August to September (northern hemisphere)

Bell heather (Erica cinerea) flowers earlier, from June, and cross-leaved heath from July, so a mixed moor offers a longer season than ling alone.

A typical window for the species, HoneyHQ synthesis — it moves with latitude, altitude and the year.

When nectar flows

Requires warmth and humidity together. A cold or dry August produces very little, and heather crops fail entirely in some years — which is the accepted risk of moving hives to the moors.

Year-to-year variation

Among the most weather-dependent honey crops anywhere. Beekeepers describe heather as either the best year they have had or nothing at all.

Sourced periods for this plant

Read from a source for the place named, and kept apart from the typical windows elsewhere on HoneyHQ, which are synthesis. Flowering, nectar flow and harvest are different periods.

• Flowering: Heather — September–October

  Provence (the PGI area), France · northern hemisphere · Months as stated · Protected-name specification

  "Late flowerings — September–October for heather, for example" (HoneyHQ's translation from the French of the specification). The specification names tree heath, ling and bell heather among Provence's heathers.

  Heather honeys are harvested in the Maures, the Estérel and the Var coast.

  Source: Cahier des charges — indication géographique protégée « Miel de Provence ». Checked 2026-10-31.

Every sourced period, on the honey atlas

What it does to the honey

Produces the smoky, slightly bitter, jelly-textured heather honey — the thixotropic gel is a protein-driven property of this nectar specifically, and it is why the honey must be pressed rather than spun.

Growing it

Conditions

Full sun and acid, free-draining, poor soil. It will not grow on chalk or limestone at all.

Size

20-60 cm, spreading to form continuous carpets.

Native range

Europe and Asia Minor, dominant on acid heath, moorland and bog margins; naturalised in North America and New Zealand.

Suits

Small gardens, Large gardens, Containers and window boxes

Maintenance, and the bit that matters

Moorland heather is managed by rotational burning and grazing for grouse and sheep. The effect on bee forage depends entirely on rotation length — a burn cycle that keeps heather young keeps it flowering, and one that does not, does not.

• Needs genuinely acid soil — ericaceous compost in a container if the garden is alkaline.
• Winter-flowering heaths (Erica carnea) tolerate slightly alkaline soil and, more usefully, flower from December to April, providing forage in the leanest months.
• Trim lightly after flowering to keep plants dense.

What it looks like

A low evergreen subshrub with tiny scale-like leaves packed along wiry stems, carrying dense spikes of small bell-shaped flowers in purple-pink, occasionally white.