Rambutan

Value to bees

Nectar

High

Pollen

Moderate

As a honey crop

Minor honey crop — a surplus only locally or occasionally

Which bees, and why

Stingless bees and the Asian honey bee do most of the work, and growers in Malaysia and Thailand increasingly place hives deliberately for fruit set rather than for honey.

Worth knowing

A reliable orchard flow, and one where bee pollination measurably lifts fruit set — most rambutan trees carry functionally male and hermaphrodite flowers and need the transfer.

Flowering

In flower

January to March (northern hemisphere)

Tropical timing that varies by latitude and by rainfall pattern rather than following a temperate calendar.

When nectar flows

Free and heavy, and the panicles carry enough flowers that a mature orchard in bloom is a genuine flow rather than a trickle.

What it does to the honey

Gives a light amber honey with a soft floral sweetness and a faint muscat lift closer to lychee honey than to anything temperate.

Growing it

Conditions

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

Size

10-20 m.

Native range

The Malay archipelago, cultivated across Southeast Asia and introduced to Central America and Australia.

• Not growable outside the wet tropics.
• Orchards are increasingly stocked with managed stingless bee colonies as much for pollination as for honey.

What it looks like

A dense evergreen tree with pinnate leaves and large terminal panicles of many tiny greenish apetalous flowers, followed by the familiar soft-spined red fruit.