Ogeechee tupelo

Value to bees

Nectar

Very high

Pollen

Moderate

As a honey crop

Major honey crop — yields a surplus in good years

Which bees, and why

Worked intensively by honey bees placed on barges and raised platforms in the swamp, since there is no dry ground to stand a hive on. Beekeepers strip stored honey from the colonies beforehand so the crop stays unmixed.

Small open flowers with freely accessible nectar; no structural barrier to short-tongued bees.

Worth knowing

Exceptional nectar in a short window, in a habitat with little competing bloom at that moment. Its value is concentration in time and space rather than volume across a season.

Flowering

In flower

April to May (northern hemisphere)

Two to three weeks, and hostage to spring conditions. A late freeze destroys the bloom and a flood at the wrong moment prevents the bees from working it.

When nectar flows

Heavy while it lasts, and entirely dependent on warm still weather over standing water. The tree flowers before the surrounding swamp canopy has fully leafed out.

Year-to-year variation

Several years in a decade produce no marketable crop. Changing freshwater flow down the Apalachicola — a long-running interstate water dispute — is the structural threat to the whole system, because reduced flow and increased salinity stress the tupelo stands themselves.

What it does to the honey

Tupelo nectar produces the highest fructose-to-glucose ratio in commercial honey, which is why the honey stays liquid indefinitely — the single clearest demonstration on the site that crystallisation is determined by nectar chemistry rather than by processing or quality. It also gives the honey its pear and green-apple character.

Growing it

Conditions

Permanently or seasonally flooded blackwater swamp, acid soil, warm humid summers. Not a garden plant in any practical sense.

Size

10-20 m, with a distinctly flared and often multi-stemmed base.

Native range

The blackwater river floodplains of the Florida panhandle and southeastern Georgia — chiefly the Apalachicola, Chipola, Ochlockonee, Ogeechee and Altamaha systems. Endemic and highly restricted.

• Effectively impossible to cultivate outside its habitat, which is why the honey has never been produced anywhere else.
• Black tupelo (Nyssa sylvatica) is widely grown as an ornamental for its autumn colour and is a decent bee plant, but it is a different species and yields a different, darker honey.

What it looks like

A small to medium tree with a swollen buttressed base standing in water, oval leaves, inconspicuous greenish flower heads, and red oblong fruit. Male and female flowers are borne on separate trees.