Mango

Value to bees

Nectar

High

Pollen

High

As a honey crop

Major honey crop — yields a surplus in good years

Which bees, and why

Mango is visited by flies, thrips, wasps and bees, and flies are frequently the more effective pollinators. A tree may carry several hundred thousand flowers and set a few dozen fruit, so the plant is not short of visitors.

Worth knowing

A good dry-season nectar and pollen source across the tropics.

Flowering

In flower

January to April (northern hemisphere)

A dry-season flow before the monsoon, and one of the first substantial Indian crops of the year.

When nectar flows

Substantial from a mature orchard, with each tree carrying several hundred thousand flowers.

Year-to-year variation

Reliable where orchards are extensive. Insecticide application during flowering is the principal risk to colonies.

What it does to the honey

Contributes a warm tropical stone-fruit note with a faint resinous edge, faintly recognisable as the fruit.

Growing it

Conditions

Full sun in a frost-free climate with a dry period before flowering. It needs deep free-draining soil and dislikes waterlogging.

Size

10-30 m tall in the ground, and kept much smaller under orchard management.

Native range

The Indo-Burma region. Cultivated across the tropics worldwide.

Suits

Large gardens, Orchard, Containers and window boxes

• Needs a genuine dry season to flower well; continuous humidity produces leaves and no fruit.
• Grafted trees fruit in three to five years; seedlings take much longer and rarely come true.
• Grown as a conservatory or container plant in temperate climates, where it very rarely fruits.

What it looks like

A large evergreen tree with long glossy leaves, flushing reddish when new, and huge branched panicles of hundreds of tiny pinkish-cream flowers held above the canopy.