Oil palm

Value to bees

Nectar

Low

Pollen

Very high

As a honey crop

Feeds the colony but rarely yields a surplus

Which bees, and why

The crop's actual pollinator is the African oil palm weevil, introduced deliberately to Southeast Asia in the 1980s and responsible for a step change in yields. Bees collect pollen from the male inflorescences without being needed for the fruit.

Worth knowing

A heavy year-round pollen source and a poor nectar one, which makes plantation apiaries protein-rich and carbohydrate-poor — a genuine management problem rather than a technicality.

Flowering

In flower

January to December (northern hemisphere)

Continuous flowering in a mature plantation, with male and female inflorescences produced in alternating cycles.

When nectar flows

Very little floral nectar of consequence. Bees work oil palm principally for its abundant pollen, and any honey crop from a plantation landscape comes largely from the understorey and margins.

What it does to the honey

Contributes pollen and body rather than flavour. Honey produced in oil palm landscapes takes its character from the understorey and forest margin, not from the palm.

Growing it

Conditions

Wet tropical lowland, high rainfall, deep soil and no dry season.

Size

15-25 m in plantation.

Native range

West and central African forest margins. Planted at very large scale in Indonesia, Malaysia, west Africa and tropical America.

Suits

Farm scale

• Plantation expansion is one of the principal drivers of lowland tropical deforestation, and the forage value of the palm does not offset the loss of the forest it replaced.
• Colonies kept in plantations generally need alternative nectar sources within flight range.

What it looks like

A stout single-trunked palm with a crown of long spiny-based fronds, carrying dense compound inflorescences of many small flowers in the leaf axils — separate male and female inflorescences on the same palm.