Pear

Value to bees

Nectar

Low

Pollen

High

As a honey crop

Not a honey source

Which bees, and why

Mason bees are markedly better pear pollinators than honey bees, because they are not choosing between flowers on sugar content — they work whatever is nearest, in cooler weather, and move between trees rather than around one. Pear is one of the strongest cases anywhere for managed solitary bees.

Worth knowing

Poor for nectar and good for pollen, which is exactly the sort of split a single bee-friendliness rating would erase.

Flowering

In flower

March to May (northern hemisphere)

Flowers one to two weeks before apple, which makes it more vulnerable to frost.

When nectar flows

Poor. Pear nectar has an unusually low sugar concentration — around ten per cent against twenty-five or more in apple — and honey bees will fly past it to reach almost anything sweeter.

Year-to-year variation

Effectively none. Pear is not a honey crop and never has been, despite the quantity of blossom.

Growing it

Conditions

Full sun, shelter from spring frost, and deep moisture-retentive soil. It is less tolerant of poor drainage than apple.

Size

3-12 m depending on rootstock; commercial orchards keep them far smaller.

Native range

Central and eastern Europe and western Asia, and cultivated across the temperate world.

Suits

Small gardens, Orchard, Large gardens, Walls and fences

• Plant two compatible cultivars; most pears are self-incompatible and set poorly alone.
• Earlier flowering than apple means greater frost risk — choose a sheltered site.
• Trained against a warm wall it fruits well in cool climates and takes very little space.
• Providing mason bee tubes near a pear tree is one of the more reliably effective things a fruit grower can do.

What it looks like

An upright tree with glossy oval leaves and clusters of white five-petalled flowers with dark red-purple anthers, opening before or with the leaves and slightly earlier than apple.