Oilseed Rape

[stoneleighhouse]

I have an opportunity to place hives at the edge of a field of OSR .However I have read that OSR can make the bees aggressive and that monocrop feeding can reduce the bees resistance to disease . Any views based on practical experience please?

 

[Monsieur Abeille]

Bees love a bit of OSR. They may be grumpy, but they'll be busy and bring in a good crop (though make sure you take it off immediately the OSR goes over otherwise you'll be left with combs filled with crystallised honey).

Monocrop isn't ideal though sometimes unavoidable, but this is just for a couple of weeks. Even if you put them in a lovely meadow with lots of wild flowers, they'll still bypass it in favour of OSR if they can sniff it.

 

[stoneleighhouse]

Osr

Merci monsieur

 

[Into the lions den]

Even if you put them in a lovely meadow with lots of wild flowers, they'll still bypass it in favour of OSR if they can sniff it.

Just one little thing to add to that. Even in a primarily monoculture area the bees will still do something about that. Even when we place colonies in the centre of a large area of OSR with no other target crops around a proportion of the bees will seemingly fly significant distances to find other pollen. Dandelion is the classic example at the correct season, and then broom, and there are others too. A minority of bees are always off finding something different.

It applies at other times and on other crops too. Even on the heather moors they will fly a long way for a late flowering Lime tree, and all through the heather season some bees in every hive seek out Tormentil, which grows low amongst the heather and many only know as the 'wee yellow flower'.

Too easy to listen to alarming factoids about monocultures and nutrition. Unless the issues are insurmountable (ie the Californian almonds situation) the bees are pretty good at getting some balance into their diets.

 

[Cazza]

I have an opportunity to place hives at the edge of a field of OSR .However I have read that OSR can make the bees aggressive and that monocrop feeding can reduce the bees resistance to disease . Any views based on practical experience please?

My bees have been collecting OSR honey for many years. I like to think I have healthy bees and I could not stop them foraging it even if I wanted to.(Which I don't.)
I think you have no need to worry here.
Cazza

 

[Poly Hive]

I well remember when extracting some Langstroth super frames and several had in the middle a distinct arch of very dark honey. There had been a bit of a flow from Hawthorn and some had evidently been recruited to work it, despite the OSR they were on.

Bees do nothing invariably.

PH

 

[YorkshireBees]

For a number of differing reasons, OSR was my main crop last season and I was very happy to have it. The bees always go crazy when it starts to flower but as has been said it lasts only a couple of weeks so it shouldn't affect their overall diet!

 

[Monsieur Abeille]

Just one little thing to add to that. Even in a primarily monoculture area the bees will still do something about that. Even when we place colonies in the centre of a large area of OSR with no other target crops around a proportion of the bees will seemingly fly significant distances to find other pollen. Dandelion is the classic example at the correct season, and then broom, and there are others too. A minority of bees are always off finding something different.

Interesting, thanks

 

[dclewis]

Here's the pollen analysis I obtained for my honey crop lifted 3/4 the way through the OSR flowering period last year when first supers fully capped. The nearest field of OSR to hives was over 200 yards.
(Sorry in French but I think its understandable)

Pollens dominants: (>45%) Brassica napus 96%
P. daccompagnement.: (>16•<45%) 0
Pollens minoritaires: (>3 • <16%) 0
Pol. très minor. ou isolés : (<3%)ilex sp, aesculus sp, castanea sp, crataegus op..

You can see from that that whilst the nectar was coming in from the OSR(brassica napus) so was the pollen in the honey almost exclusively from the rape too.

 

[Midland Beek]

OSR pollen is just about the best and most useful that bees will find in the UK in any quantity.

 

[Rosti]

OSR is great IMO, great early boost, gives a good crop around mid/end May and for quite a few of the locals that buy my honey is prefered. It does crystalise quickly (hence the advice in this thread to harvest promptly). For that reason I label my early honey as 'crystal honey' and my main crop as 'blossom honey'. Never been able to stock both to give people a choice though - the crystal has always sold out really quickly. Winners all round.