Stringybark

Value to bees

Nectar

Very high

Pollen

High

As a honey crop

Major honey crop — yields a surplus in good years

Which bees, and why

The myrtle-family brush flower holds copious exposed nectar and enormous quantities of pollen, and is worked by honey bees, native stingless bees, birds and mammals together.

Worth knowing

One of the mainstays of Australian commercial honey production, valued for both a heavy nectar flow and good pollen.

Flowering

In flower

December to March (southern hemisphere)

Summer flowering, and like most eucalypts on an irregular multi-year cycle rather than an annual one.

When nectar flows

Heavy when it comes. A stringybark flowering is a commercial event that beekeepers move hundreds of kilometres for.

Year-to-year variation

Eucalypts bud years in advance and flower on cycles of two to four years or longer, which makes Australian beekeeping a matter of tracking bud development across a landscape rather than following a calendar.

What it does to the honey

Gives a mid amber honey with a full malty body, a clean eucalypt aromatic edge and a slightly dry finish.

Growing it

Conditions

Full sun on poor dry soils, which is where the group naturally dominates.

Size

20-35 m.

Native range

Southeastern Australia — Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia — on dry ridges and poor soils.

Suits

Large gardens, Farm scale

• Large forest trees rather than garden plants, though widely planted in Australian rural landscapes.
• Bud watching a year or more ahead is how the flow is anticipated.

What it looks like

Tall forest trees with thick fibrous bark that can be pulled off in long strings, and clusters of cream stamen-brush flowers held among sickle-shaped adult leaves.