Soybean

Value to bees

Nectar

Moderate

Pollen

Low

As a honey crop

Minor honey crop — a surplus only locally or occasionally

Which bees, and why

The flowers are small, largely self-pollinating and easy to miss, and bees work them only when secretion is good. Several studies find modest yield increases from insect visitation despite the crop's self-fertility.

Worth knowing

Enormous in area and unreliable in yield. Where it does flow it is a genuine surplus crop; where it does not, an apiary surrounded by soybeans can starve.

Flowering

In flower

July to August (northern hemisphere)

Midsummer, and coinciding with the point at which many American landscapes have finished their clover.

When nectar flows

Extremely variable and strongly humidity-dependent. A hot humid July can produce a heavy flow from a field that gave nothing the previous year, and no beekeeper plans on it.

Year-to-year variation

The most unpredictable major flow in North American beekeeping. Variety, soil moisture, night temperature and humidity all affect secretion, and the interaction is not well understood.

What it does to the honey

Gives a very pale, mild honey with a clean light sweetness and almost no distinguishing character — frequently blended rather than sold as a monofloral.

Growing it

Conditions

Full sun on fertile well-drained soil with warm humid summers.

Size

0.5-1.2 m.

Native range

East Asia. Grown at enormous scale in the United States, Brazil, Argentina and China.

Suits

Farm scale

• A field crop rather than a garden plant.
• Insecticide application during flowering is a recurring problem for colonies placed near soybean, and timing matters more than the crop itself.

What it looks like

A bushy hairy annual to about a metre with trifoliate leaves and small, easily overlooked white or pale purple pea flowers tucked in the leaf axils.