Tea

Value to bees

Nectar

High

Pollen

High

As a honey crop

Minor honey crop — a surplus only locally or occasionally

Which bees, and why

Much tea honey comes from Apis cerana in small fixed apiaries in hill tea districts, where the terrain suits it better than migratory operations. Tea is partly self-incompatible and benefits from insect pollination for seed, though plantations propagate vegetatively.

Worth knowing

A good late nectar and pollen source, arriving when the season is otherwise closing.

Flowering

In flower

October to December (northern hemisphere)

An autumn flowering after the final leaf harvest, and one of the last crops of the Chinese season.

When nectar flows

Substantial where plantations are extensive and bushes are left to flower.

Year-to-year variation

Depends entirely on plantation management. A plantation picked to the last flush produces no honey at all.

What it does to the honey

Contributes a distinctly tea-like bitterness and a green vegetal note over a creamy base, and it sets very fast.

Growing it

Conditions

Acid, moist, free-draining soil in dappled shade or sun, with high humidity and no hard frost. It will grow in a mild temperate garden and rarely thrive.

Size

1-2 m as managed in plantations, and up to 15 m as an unpruned tree.

Native range

The border regions of southwestern China, northern Myanmar and northeastern India. Cultivated across the subtropical highlands of Asia and Africa.

Suits

Containers and window boxes, Small gardens, Large gardens

• Ericaceous compost and rainwater in hard-water areas; it will not tolerate lime.
• Let it flower rather than picking continuously if you want it to be useful to bees.
• Hardy to around -5 °C, so it needs a sheltered position or a container in most of northern Europe.

What it looks like

An evergreen shrub with glossy serrated leaves, kept clipped to waist height in plantations, carrying nodding white flowers with a boss of yellow stamens in autumn.