Strawberry tree

Value to bees

Nectar

High

Pollen

Moderate

As a honey crop

Minor honey crop — a surplus only locally or occasionally

Which bees, and why

Worked hard by honey bees and late bumblebees on any mild autumn day. The flowers hang downwards and are narrow-mouthed, so a bee has to work at them — bumblebees handle the shape better than honey bees do.

Pendulous urn-shaped flowers with a constricted mouth, which favours bees that can grip and hang. Some short-tongued bees rob the nectar through the base instead.

Worth knowing

Valuable out of all proportion to its abundance, because of when it flowers. Late nectar lets colonies enter winter with fresh stores in a landscape that has otherwise shut down.

Flowering

Typically in flower

October to December (northern hemisphere)

The latest significant nectar flow in the European year, running past ivy and into early winter in mild coastal areas.

A typical window for the species, HoneyHQ synthesis — it moves with latitude, altitude and the year.

When nectar flows

Needs mild, still autumn weather to yield. In a cold or wet November the flowers open and the bees cannot work them, which is why corbezzolo honey fails entirely in some years.

Year-to-year variation

Notoriously unreliable. Sardinian producers regard a genuine corbezzolo crop as a two-or-three-years-in-five event, which is a substantial part of why the honey is so expensive.

Sourced periods for this plant

Read from a source for the place named, and kept apart from the typical windows elsewhere on HoneyHQ, which are synthesis. Flowering, nectar flow and harvest are different periods.

• Nectar flow: Strawberry tree — September–February

  Corsica (the PDO area), France · northern hemisphere · Season words; months derived · Protected-name specification

  Among the island's seasonal nectar staples, "strawberry tree in autumn–winter" (HoneyHQ's translation from the French of the Corsica specification).

  The source of the bitter autumn-maquis honey. The quantity varies with the year's weather.

  Source: Cahier des charges de l’appellation d’origine « Miel de Corse – Mele di Corsica ». Checked 2026-10-31.

• Nectar flow: Strawberry tree — October–November

  Corsica (the PDO area), France · northern hemisphere · Months as stated · Beekeeping authority

  "At the end of the season (October or November), beekeepers can take their hives to strawberry tree"; the season "can run until November or even December with the autumn maquis flow (mainly strawberry tree)" (HoneyHQ's translation from the French of the beekeeping institute's case study).

  Drawn October to November; "or even December" is an extension the study does not make regular, so it is kept in the words and not drawn. The flow may yield honey for sale or only the colonies' winter stores.

  Source: Cas-type apiculture — Corse : miel en AOP et vente en demi-gros. Checked 2026-10-31.

Every sourced period, on the honey atlas

What it does to the honey

Arbutus nectar carries the phenolic compounds responsible for corbezzolo honey's extreme bitterness — coffee grounds, burnt caramel, an almost smoky finish. It is the most extreme example on the site of a honey being valued for the absence of sweetness.

Growing it

Conditions

Full sun to light shade, well-drained soil, and unusually for the heather family it tolerates lime. Hardy to about -10 °C and happy in coastal exposure.

Size

3-8 m, occasionally to 12 m.

Native range

The Mediterranean basin and the Atlantic fringe of western Europe, with a notable and long-isolated native population in southwest Ireland.

Suits

Small gardens, Large gardens, Containers and window boxes

• One of the best autumn-flowering plants a temperate garden can have, and one of very few evergreen trees offering serious late forage.
• The fruit is edible and largely tasteless — unedo is usually glossed as 'I eat one', meaning once. It is used for jam and for the Portuguese spirit medronho.
• Slow to establish and worth buying as a reasonable-sized plant; a small one takes years to reach flowering size.

What it looks like

A dense evergreen shrub or small tree with dark glossy leaves, shredding red-brown bark, drooping clusters of small white or pink urn-shaped flowers, and warty red-orange fruit ripening a full year behind the flowers it came from.