Dog rosemary as a honey plant
The evergreen honey plant bog rosemary produces a lot of nectar, but this only causes trouble for the beekeeper. Let's look at why a good honey plant bog rosemary and is a disaster for an apiary.
Description of the honey plant bog rosemary
Honey plant bog rosemary, Latin name - Andrmeda - a genus of evergreen low-growing shrubs or shrubs of the Heather family. The honey plant bog rosemary grows in the forest and tundra zones of Eurasia and North America in peat bogs and damp coniferous forests. In the mountains it rises to the lower part of the alpine belt. The height of an adult plant is from 15 to 60 cm. The rhizome is long, in the form of a cord, common to many above-ground shoots. bog rosemary, like most other plants from the Ericaceae family, is characterized by mycorrhiza - a mutually beneficial symbiosis (mutualism) of fungal mycelium with plant roots. The stem is slightly branched, smooth, creeping, rooting; shoots are hard, ascending, red-brown. Leaves are lanceolate, with edges turned down; dark green above, shiny, matte white below with a waxy coating, leathery, with a waxy coating, length from 1 to 5 cm and width from 2 to 8 mm.
The fruits ripen in August - September. The fruit is a five-locular spherical-oblate capsule, which opens along the backs of its constituent carpels.
The honey plant bog rosemary grows slowly; annual growth is about 3 cm.
How bog rosemary blooms
The flowers are pink (sometimes of a different color - from white to dark red), drooping; collected in several pieces on long reddish pedicels located at the ends of last year's shoots. Petals fused; The corolla is ovoid- or spherical-pitcher-shaped (goblet-shaped), pubescent inside, which prevents small insects from penetrating the flower. There are ten stamens, with red anthers and appendages in the form of two small sharp horns, one style. The anthers open only after the stigma has matured and cross-pollination has taken place, but their opening occurs only at the moment when there is a large insect inside the flower. On the way to the nectar, it shakes the stamens, touching their appendages, and the anthers, hiding, shower the insect with pollen.
The value of honey plant bog rosemary for bees
bog rosemary is good as a honey plant; the honey productivity of bog rosemary is up to 180 kg per hectare. However, the beekeeper should not be happy if the beebel grows near the apiary. bog rosemary blooms in April - June, sometimes in the fall the bog rosemary blooms again. However, pobel produces honey that is unsuitable for human consumption; in addition, the presence of poison in the nectar makes honey dangerous for bees. Therefore, bog rosemary honey is not suitable for practical beekeeping. Even a small admixture of bog rosemary nectar makes honey bitter.
