Mesquite

Value to bees

Nectar

High

Pollen

High

As a honey crop

Major honey crop — yields a surplus in good years

Which bees, and why

Worked heavily by honey bees and by a substantial community of desert-adapted native bees. The southwestern United States and northern Mexico hold exceptional native bee diversity, and mesquite is one of the plants underwriting it.

Worth knowing

A principal desert forage plant, providing both nectar and pollen in landscapes with very few alternatives.

Flowering

In flower

April to August (northern hemisphere)

Flowers in flushes triggered by rain rather than on a fixed calendar, which can mean two or three separate blooms in a good year.

When nectar flows

Heavy where rainfall has been sufficient, and absent where it has not. The relationship between rain and flow is unusually direct.

Year-to-year variation

Extremely variable and rain-dependent. A wet spring produces an excellent crop; a dry one produces nothing at all. Desert beekeeping is a matter of reading the rainfall.

What it does to the honey

Light to medium amber, mild and smooth with a warm, slightly smoky sweetness and a distinctly desert character. It is milder than its dark relatives suggest.

Growing it

Conditions

Full sun and extreme drought tolerance once established. It requires heat and will not survive a cold wet winter.

Size

3-12 m tall depending on species and water, often shrubbier in the driest sites.

Native range

The southwestern United States, Mexico, and dry regions of South America. Introduced and now seriously invasive in Africa, Australia and India.

Suits

Large gardens, Farm scale

• Only worth planting in genuinely arid or semi-arid climates.
• The taproot goes very deep and the tree resents transplanting once established.
• Thorns are substantial — site it away from paths.

What it looks like

A small thorny tree or large shrub with fine, feathery bipinnate leaves and dense cylindrical spikes of tiny cream-yellow flowers, like pale bottlebrushes. Long seed pods follow, sweet and edible, and historically a staple food.