Blackberry as a honey plant

Blackberries are often found in forests and plantations. Blackberries are loved by many, but also blackberries are honey plants and pollen plants, which bring many benefits to bees. We will talk about the features of blackberries as a honey plant in this article.

 

Content

• Description of the honey plant blackberry
• Where does blackberry grow as a honey plant?
• Blackberry as a honey plant
• Blackberry honey plant flowering period
• Honey productivity of blackberries
• Blackberry honey

 

 

Description of the honey plant blackberry

Gray blackberry Latin name Rubus caesius L. It is a perennial shrub from the Rosaceae family, 50-150 cm in height, with creeping, spiny shoots covered with a white coating.
Blackberry leaves are trifoliate, with rhombic-ovate leaves. The flowers are white, with many stamens and pistils, collected in thyroid racemes.

The fruits of blackberries are black with a bluish coating and collected drupes. For the sake of these fruits, blackberry honey plants are grown on plantations in many countries of the world, but most of all in North America and Australia; in Europe, large areas of blackberries are located in Serbia.

Where does blackberry grow as a honey plant?

Blackberries grow as honey plants in forest and forest-steppe zones; they can be found in clearings, forest edges, in sparse forests, and along river banks. In forests, blackberries are often an undergrowth honey plant along with other shrubs, such as bird cherry, rowan, buckthorn, raspberry, zoster, hawthorn, and currant. Blackberries often create impenetrable thickets over large areas.

The blackberry honey plant is also often found in the steppes where blackberries can be found in ravines, on river banks, in ravine forests, where blackberries as a honey plant are one of the important components of the honey base.
Blackberries, as honey plants, are often grown in gardens, where they, however, have not acquired the same importance as raspberries. This is partly due to the fact that blackberries have less winter hardiness, as well as large thorns.
In many countries, the honey plant blackberry is grown on large plantations, where blackberries are grown for their berries and where pollination of blackberries by bees is an important part of the cultivation practice.

How to pollinate blackberries with bees.

How many bees are needed to pollinate blackberries?

For commercial production, it is important to get the largest possible yield of high quality blackberries, so it is important for them to create a density of bees sufficient for good pollination of blackberries.

How many hives does it take to pollinate blackberries?

On plantations, as a rule, blackberries are grown on trellises with a distance between bushes of 1.5–2.0 m. The rows of blackberries are arranged in accordance with the care technology and the type of equipment used; as a rule, the rows are located at a distance of 2–3 m from each other. Which gives a density of 1430–2670 blackberry bushes per 1 hectare.
The average time to visit a blackberry flower is eight seconds, with honeybees being most active on blackberries between 10:00 a.m. and 4:30 p.m.

Many sources indicate that 2 hives per hectare of blackberries is enough to obtain sufficient pollination.
In different regions, due to climate, there may be some differences in the rate of visits to one flower and the period during which bees visit blackberries. For this reason, in Australia, recommended densities of bees pollinating blackberries range from 2 to 10 hives per hectare.
The number of hives needed to pollinate blackberries will be influenced by weather conditions, the presence of competing honey-bearing vegetation and other factors.

Features of bee pollination of blackberries

How to Place Hives in a Blackberry Plantation for Pollination

For blackberries to be pollinated by bees, the hive must be arranged in such a way that the bees fly along the rows, and not across the rows. The arrangement of hives for pollinating blackberries has many similarities with the arrangement of hives for pollinating grapes. If the hives are placed incorrectly, this will reduce the flight activity of the bees and, consequently, the degree of pollination, since the bees will tend to work along, rather than across, the rows of pollinated plants.
The hives should be placed at small intervals at the beginning of the rows, rather than collecting the entire apiary in one place at the edge of the field.
To pollinate blackberries, strong colonies with a lot of brood are needed.
Blackberries produce a lot of pollen, and in some regions they can be good honey plants, so it makes sense to install a pollen collector and collect some of the blackberry pollen that the bees carry to the hive; this will also allow you to control the bees’ attendance of blackberry flowers.
To increase the flight activity of bees, bee bread reserves can be removed from the hive.
Blackberries are good honey plants, and therefore no additional training is required for bees to visit blackberry flowers. However, in the presence of competing melliferous vegetation, it would be useful to give the bees a rejecting fertilizer, so The bees would focus on pollinating the blackberries.

When to Place Hives in a Blackberry Plantation for Pollination

Since blackberry flowers are usually very attractive to bees, hives should be placed on the plantation at the beginning of flowering. This period is also important because the amount of pollen in flowers is high at the beginning of flowering and during full flowering and decreases towards the end of flowering. Therefore, setting up hives with bees at the beginning of flowering promotes maximum pollen transfer and maximum harvest.

 

Blackberry honey plants are often grown along fences to create thorny hedges and to secure slopes. The blackberry honey plant is relatively decorative, so some varieties are used for landscaping arbors.

Blackberry as a honey plant

Blackberries as a honey plant have earned a variety of reviews, so different that the question arises among many beekeepers: are blackberries a honey plant or not?
To the question whether blackberries are honey plants or not, one can answer in the affirmative, yes, blackberries are honey plants, but they have their own characteristics.
What are the benefits of blackberries for bees? Blackberries are honey bearers and pollen bearers, and this is their benefit for bees. Not only wild blackberries, but also blackberries grown on plantations, provide bees with a lot of nectar and pollen. The nectar in the blackberry flower is easily accessible to bees.

Blackberry honey plant flowering period

 

When does blackberry bloom as a honey plant? What is the flowering period of the blackberry honey plant?
Blackberries bloom as a honey plant in June-July; some claim that blackberries bloom from June to September. But the period of mass flowering is important for bees, so the flowering period of the blackberry honey plant, depending on the weather, ranges from 14 to 30 days.

 

Honey productivity of blackberries

 

How much honey do bees collect from blackberries? As a rule, blackberries are a secondary honey plant; the nectar that bees collect from blackberries, as a rule, goes to the development of families. But in some years, when the weather is favorable, the control hive can become heavier by up to 3 kg per day, and then the beekeeper can obtain commercial honey from blackberries. Blackberries produce nectar well in warm and humid weather, when it is warm and raining, blackberries bloom for a long time, up to 4 weeks.
If there is no rain and it is very hot, then nectar production decreases and the blackberry honey plant becomes more pollen-bearing. From blackberries, bees carry pollen that is rusty-gray or greenish in color.
In general, the honey productivity of blackberries per hectare of continuous thickets is 20-25 kg.

Blackberry honey

It is extremely rare for a beekeeper to boast of blackberry honey. Blackberry honey is light, transparent or light amber in color, pleasant to the taste. So there is no need to look for blackberry honey on the market.