Niger seed

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

A daisy-family composite head is a dense disc of shallow florets that a bee can walk across working one after another, which makes it an unusually efficient foraging surface.

Worth knowing

A principal Ethiopian honey source and the reason the country's autumn crop is as large as it is, alongside the white honeys of the highland forests.

Flowering

In flower

September to November (northern hemisphere)

Post-rains flowering in Ethiopia, and the main autumn honey flow across large parts of the highlands.

When nectar flows

Free and abundant, presented in an open composite head that nothing is excluded from.

What it does to the honey

Gives a golden honey with a clean, slightly grassy sweetness and a soft finish — closer to sunflower honey than to the darker forest honeys of the same country.

Growing it

Conditions

Full sun on moderately fertile soil at altitude, and it tolerates poor drainage better than most oilseeds.

Size

1-1.8 m.

Native range

The Ethiopian highlands, cultivated there and in parts of India, Nepal and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Suits

Farm scale

• Grown for cooking oil in Ethiopia and sold worldwide as nyjer birdseed, which is the form most people in Europe have met it in.
• Bird-seed nyjer is heat-treated to prevent germination, so it will not grow if sown.

What it looks like

A branching annual to about a metre and a half with narrow clasping leaves and bright yellow daisy flower heads carried well clear of the foliage, followed by small black oil-rich seeds.