Hazel as a pollen plant
Hazel grows in many forest biotopes and in the summer cottages of many nut lovers. Many people love hazelnuts, but few people know that hazelnuts are an important plant for bees as a source of protein food in early spring. Let's look at why hazel is important for bees in more detail.
Content
- Description of the pollen-bearing hazel plant
- How is hazel pollinated?
- Hazel as a honey plant
- Hazel for bees
Description of the pollen-bearing hazel plant
What is hazel? Hazel belongs to the hazel family (Corylaceae). There are other pollen-bearing plants in the family, for example, variegated hazel. Hazel is a large shrub with branched stems covered with brown bark, 2-7 meters high. The leaves are alternate, pubescent, large, oval or round, serrated along the edges, stalked.
Male hazel flowers are collected in pendulous multi-flowered catkins, female flowers - two in the axils of scales from fused bracts.
The fruits are single-seeded nuts with a dense shell, surrounded by a leaf-shaped green calyx of fused bracts.
Hazel is found almost throughout the Europe, with the exception of the northern and eastern regions.
How is hazel pollinated?
Hazel is a monoecious plant with dioecious flowers. Hazel blossoms long before the leaves bloom - in late March - early May, depending on the region. As a rule, hazel is pollinated by the wind, but bees willingly visit hazel flowers.
Hazel as a honey plant
How good is hazel as a honey plant? It must be said that hazel is not a honey plant, in other words, hazel does not produce nectar, the value of hazel for bees is not in nectar, but in the pollen that it produces in early spring.
Hazel for bees
Of the pollen-bearing plants, hazel is the earliest flowering shrub, so many beekeepers count the flowering date of other honey plants from the date of its flowering - this makes it more convenient to predict honey yield in a changing climate. Hazel is an important plant for bees, because as a rule, the spring flight of bees coincides with the beginning of hazel flowering, when there is still snow in the forest; at this time only alder and coltsfoot can also bloom.
Hazel as a pollen carrier for bees provides a large amount of pollen in favorable weather. After wintering, bees always greedily collect pollen from blossoming earrings, which significantly stimulates the queen to lay eggs. Collecting pollen from a hazel tree, bees carry yellow-green pollen into the hive.
Beekeepers can store hazel pollen for bees to use. To collect pollen for future use, hazel branches with earrings that have not yet blossomed are cut off and laid out on clean paper in a warm room. Within a few days, the anthers burst, and when the branches are shaken, hazel pollen falls onto the paper. It is collected, sifted through a sieve and dried.
Harvested hazel pollen is a very valuable protein food for bees in the early spring, when it is given to the bees as a protein supplement. This is especially true for apiaries working in greenhouses. For them, cut hazel branches are placed in buckets of water in the greenhouse, and the bees willingly collect fresh pollen.
One hazel plant produces 40 - 60 g of pollen during the flowering period. Thus, hazel thickets in the undergrowth are very valuable areas for the development of families after wintering.