Any nectar given in peas and green bean flowers?

[Firefly]

I love the smell of beans in flower and my bees usually go for them too.
Cazza

Hoping so - I love the smell too: scented soap

Cazza, that avatar is not N Suffolk!

 

[Cazza]

Hoping so - I love the smell too: scented soap

Cazza, that avatar is not N Suffolk!

Have you not seen it on the A14 as you pass Bury St Edmunds?
C

Free queen marking pen to anyone who knows where it really is!

 

[Firefly]

Free queen marking pen to anyone who knows where it really is!

Picos de Europa?

 

[chrismcd]

Possibly a case of disobedient bees not working the flowers the script said - as mine did. Might have been clover. My understanding is honey from beans is darker - but of course who knows in these high tech DNA manipulating days?

Very experienced beekeepers who knew what they were doing. If they said it was Field Beans they probably knew what they were talking about.

Certainly not clover honey, it stayed very runny and won a number of prizes in honey shows.

AFAIK Field beans are very popular with most sorts of bees - even if Bumbles have to resort to breaking and entering.

 

[Cazza]

Picos de Europa?

Nope. Wrong country.
C

 

[Firefly]

A little bit of reading on the internet suggests that there are three ways in which bees get nectar from beans:

• climbing into the flower (though often, if the do that, they are more interested in the pollen than the nectar, apparently)
• through bumble-bee holes in the flower base
• from "extra-floral nectaries": "on the underside of the stipules, the small leaflike parts at the base of the leaf"

A 1962 paper from Rothamstead Min of Ag experimental farm found that direct access to the flower was easily least common and holes the most common, with extra-floral nectaries a close second. The extra-floral nectaries secrete nectar throughout the life of the plant; their primary purpose is probably to attract ants, but the bees don't know that!


Most of the references I found suggest that bean honey is medium to dark colour, but nothing I found was totally convincing

 

[Firefly]

Nope. Wrong country.
C

Slovenia?

 

[Cazza]

Slovenia?

Still wrong country.
C

 

[Firefly]

Still wrong country.
C

Give up

 

[Finman]

.
I just read Australian report about bees on faba fields.
Bees pollinate beans but hardly get much nectar. Nectar is not a factor which invite bees pollinate.

It is ministry report.

American honey plants book says: phaseolous bean as surplus honey produder has been seldom reported.

 

[susbees]

.
I just read Australian report about bees on faba fields.
Bees pollinate beans but hardly get much nectar. Nectar is not a factor which invite bees pollinate.

It is ministry report.

American honey plants book says: phaseolous bean as surplus honey produder has been seldom reported.

Now I know I saw pale cream coloured set "Heather Honey" in a shop yesterday....but this is the UK and there is bean honeyhttp://www.greatbritishhoney.co.uk/honeyshop.html as a premium product. I expect a spot of pollen analysis would solve the argument....anyone fancy buying a jar ???

 

[oliver90owner]

You could be really naughty and ask TS to do it for you? I am presuming here the shop and the link are not one and the same? Otherwise, ask GBH on the forum?

 

[pedroz]

Runner bean is a good nectar source, in some small region of Poland bean honey is an typical product. The honey is almost colorless, not very sweet and little bit acidic.