Mopane

Value to bees

Nectar

Moderate

Pollen

Moderate

As a honey crop

Major honey crop — yields a surplus in good years

Which bees, and why

Worked by African honey bees in bark and log hives. Because people gather the same psyllid secretions, the bees are in direct competition with a local human harvest.

Worth knowing

Modest floral nectar and a substantial honeydew resource, which is the reason the woodland supports beekeeping at all.

Flowering

In flower

September to December (southern hemisphere)

The psyllid honeydew season in the dry months before the rains rather than a nectar flowering.

When nectar flows

Modest from the flowers themselves. The larger resource is honeydew from mopane psyllids feeding on the leaves, which is also gathered by people as mopane manna.

Year-to-year variation

Depends on psyllid populations, which vary between seasons.

What it does to the honey

Contributes a dark malty savoury depth with a mineral finish, closer to a European forest honeydew than to an African blossom honey.

Growing it

Conditions

Hot dry conditions on heavy alkaline soils, frequently where little else grows. Extremely drought-tolerant.

Size

4-18 m tall, and stunted to shrubby mopane scrub on poor ground.

Native range

Southern Africa — northern Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Angola, Mozambique and the Limpopo valley.

Suits

Large gardens

• Not a garden tree outside its native range.
• The wood is exceptionally hard, termite-resistant and slow-burning, which makes it the preferred braai wood across the region.
• Mopane woodland is enormous, largely unfarmed and therefore effectively free of agrochemicals.

What it looks like

A tree with distinctive paired leaflets shaped like a butterfly's wings, folding shut in midday heat, and inconspicuous greenish flowers. The bark is deeply fissured and the wood extremely hard and termite-resistant.