Honey bees and plants have a special relationship. Each benefits the other. Flowering plants provide food for honey bees; in turn, bees provide pollination for many plants, enabling them to reproduce.

Honey bees visit flowers to collect pollen and nectar for food. Pollen is essential to bees because it is their only natural source of protein. Without it, colonies would be unable to produce new bees and would eventually die. Nectar is the carbohydrate portion of the honey bee’s food and is the raw material of honey. Bees convert nectar into honey by adding an enzyme which breaks down the complex sugars into simple sugars. This process also reduces the moisture content of the original nectar. About 18 percent of the water remains in what becomes honey. Chemically reducing sugars and lowering the moisture content of nectar are the two processes that convert nectar to honey.

To produce honey successfully, you must have your honey bee colonies at peak strength when the major nectar producing plants in your area begin to bloom. To properly manage honey bee colonies so their populations will increase and peak at the correct time, you must have a working knowledge of the nectar and pollen producing plants in the vicinity of your apiaries. This knowledge will enable you to determine when to stimulate brood production, add supers, use swarm control measures, harvest honey, requeen, prepare colonies for winter, and locate the most profitable apiary sites. If left on their own, most honey bee colonies don’t begin increasing their populations rapidly until the major nectar flow starts. As a result, the nectar flow is usually over before the colonies are strong enough to produce a surplus of honey.

Honey bees may be kept almost anywhere in Alabama because there are enough nectar and pollen producing plants within flight range to produce some surplus honey. However, apiaries only a few miles apart are often found to produce honey crops varying considerably in size. Therefore, greater production and profit may result if you give more attention to kinds and numbers of nectar and pollen producing plants. The numbers of plants in any given area may change considerably over a period of years due to natural events.

Beginners in beekeeping frequently ask questions about growing crops or plants specifically for honey production. In general, it is not economically practical to grow a crop for the honey bees alone. Beekeepers are largely dependent on cultivated crops grown for other purposes or on wild plants. However, under certain conditions, it may be advantageous for beekeepers to use certain nectar and pollen producing plants in landscaping their home grounds and to plant certain crops on idle land. Either case would require selection of specific plants or crops adapted to, and suitable for, specific locations and situations.

The ideal location for an apiary is in an area free of hazardous insecticides, and should contain an abundance of nectar and pollen producing plants blooming in succession through the spring, summer, and fall. Honey color and flavor are determined by the plant or plants from which the bees collect nectar. To produce honey for your table or the market, your bees must have access to an abundance of plants yielding large amounts of nectar that will make a high-quality, table-grade honey.

Nectar production and secretion are affected by many factors, such as fertility, soil moisture and acidity, altitude, latitude, length of day, the number of hours of sunlight per day, and weather.

Some of the primary nectar plants in Alabama are yellow-poplar (also known as tulip-poplar) and various clovers, particularly crimson, arrowleaf and white. Clover honey is often used as the standard for comparison, because clovers and other legumes yield a light-colored, mild-flavored honey. Yellow-poplar nectar produces a high-quality, deep-amber, full-flavored honey. Soybeans and cotton also yield an amber honey that has a good flavor. Both of these commonly grown crops may produce enough nectar for bees to store surplus honey, but the use of insecticides can make beekeeping near these fields quite hazardous.