Vitex

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 by both the introduced western honey bee, which produces the commercial crop, and the native Apis cerana still widely kept in the Chinese uplands. The short mint-family corolla is within a honey bee's reach, unlike many of its relatives.

Short two-lipped flowers with nectar reachable by short-tongued bees, which is why it is a honey crop rather than a bumblebee plant.

Worth knowing

Very high nectar in a short window, from a plant that covers whole mountainsides.

Flowering

In flower

June to July (northern hemisphere)

Two to four weeks in high summer, and strongly dependent on heat and humidity together — a dry spell during flowering suppresses the flow badly.

When nectar flows

Copious in the right conditions and disappointing in the wrong ones. Northern Chinese beekeepers regard the vitex flow as the year's most valuable and least predictable.

Year-to-year variation

Highly weather-dependent. A good vitex year is the difference between a profitable season and a poor one across large parts of Hebei and Shanxi.

What it does to the honey

Vitex nectar produces a water-white, exceptionally clean honey with a light floral sweetness and a faint fresh herbal lift — the benchmark against which Chinese honey is judged.

Growing it

Conditions

Full sun, sharp drainage, poor dry soil. Drought-tolerant once established and hardy to around -15 °C.

Size

2-5 m.

Native range

East and south Asia, from China and Japan through India to southeast Asia.

Suits

Large gardens, Small gardens

• Grown as an ornamental in warm-temperate gardens for its aromatic foliage and late flowers.
• Not to be confused with Vitex agnus-castus, the Mediterranean chaste tree used in herbal preparations — a different species with a different reputation attached to it.
• Prune hard in spring; it flowers on new wood.

What it looks like

A deciduous shrub with aromatic palmate leaves of five leaflets, grey-felted beneath, and slender terminal panicles of small pale lilac two-lipped flowers.