Rape as a honey plant

Rape - Brssica npus. Rapeseed is a melliferous plant, belongs to the genus Cabbage (Cruciferous family). It is grown as an oilseed, green manure crop, a good honey plant.

Content

• Rape honey plant and industrial crop
• Winter rapeseed as a honey plant
• Spring rapeseed as a honey plant
• Rapeseed as pollen
• perko honey plant
• Rapeseed honey
• Belarusian experience of honey collection from rapeseed

 

 

Rape honey plant and industrial crop

Large areas are sown with rapeseed for biofuel production.

The advantage of this plant is that it is a source of two valuable products: high-quality honey and vegetable oil, which is used in various areas of food and industrial production. Rape seeds make it possible to obtain a product with healing properties - an oil rich in polyunsaturated fatty acids.
Even rapeseed cake is used. It is excellent feed for livestock. In total, there are two types of this oil-bearing and melliferous plant: winter rape (biennial) and spring rape (one-year).

 

Winter rapeseed as a honey plant

This type of plant is very demanding on the climate. Mild winters are a prerequisite for successful germination of rapeseed. Having a bright yellow color of bisexual flowers, leaves of a bluish-green color, it attracts many bees, which ensures its high honey production. The honey productivity of 1 ha of winter rape fluctuates between 30 and 90 kg. When sown in autumn, rapeseed is a good early-spring honey plant. Rapeseed blooms in May-June for 25-30 days. Flowering of one brush lasts 28-35 days, and the whole plant - 45 days.
A strong bee colony from rapeseed can collect up to 3.5 and even 4.5 kg of honey in one day. For effective pollination, it is necessary to bring bees to the crops in the first 2-3 days of rapeseed flowering, at the rate of 3-4 bee colonies per hectare of crops.

A big problem in the honey harvest from rapeseed is the poisoning of bees with pesticides, since rapeseed has a lot of pests. To prevent poisoning of bees, rapeseed crops must be treated with pesticides at the beginning of budding or 14 days before the first flowers appear. While farmers most often start processing rapeseed only when they see pests on the rapeseed itself, regardless of whether it blooms or not. In addition, in Russia and the CIS countries, drugs banned for use in the EU and the USA have recently been widely flooded. These are systemic pesticides that accumulate in all parts of the plant, including nectar and pollen. Pesticides can retain their toxicity for several years in the same field. For this reason, even if the farmer withstands the terms of pesticide treatment of rapeseed, the bees still die. To prevent such poisoning of bees with pesticides, farmers need to switch to less dangerous for bees. In this case, subject to the terms and rules of processing, rapeseed crops will be devoid of pests and will not be dangerous for bees.

Rapeseed honey from winter rapeseed must be pumped out immediately after the end of rapeseed flowering, otherwise it will crystallize right in the combs.

If there is a rapeseed field near the apiary, it is imperative to find contact with the agronomist, because the treatments will be mandatory, the beekeeper should also look at the flowering rapeseed field himself and if he sees the presence of pests - small black bugs, then the beekeeper should prepare for the fact that the fields will be processed, even without warning.

Spring rapeseed as a honey plant

 

It is a late honey plant due to the flowering time - August-September. It is less demanding on soil composition and climate. Due to frost resistance, spring rapeseed is suitable for sowing in early spring. This honey plant is not as productive as winter honey plant in terms of oil content.

Under the conditions of the Oryol region, spring rapeseed blooms for 20-50 days, sown in several periods, it can continuously bloom for two months.

In the case of sowing on May 1, flowering begins 45 days after germination and rapeseed continues to bloom for 29 days. When sown on June 20, rapeseed begins to bloom 38 days after germination and continues to bloom for 39 days.

For the purposes of beekeeping, it is desirable to sow rapeseed in the spring, in which case the honey productivity is maximum.

The beekeeper should be very careful in case of late flowering of spring rapeseed (in September) as the honeycomb stimulates the laying of the queen and the bees begin to feed a lot of brood. During nightly cold snaps, there will be no large honey collection, the family may delay preparations for winter too much and overwinter very badly. Rapeseed honey for wintering bees should not be left.

Rapeseed as pollen

Honey plant rapeseed pollen. Bees collect pollen from rapeseed, but there are a number of features.

During the flowering of rapeseed, bees prefer the pollen of such plants as maples, clover and hawthorn and others, but when the bees' choice is limited to fields of flowering rapeseed, corn and sunflower, they prefer rapeseed pollen.
Pollen of rapeseed according to the content of protein and minerals , is not inferior to the pollen of maples, clover and hawthorn, but it has a smaller pollen diameter (about 24 microns), which slows down the collection of pollen by bees. Therefore, the choice of bees falls on plants with pollen of a larger diameter (clover - 36 microns, maple - 30 microns, hawthorn - 38 microns) and a higher nutritional value.

 

 

Perko honey plant

Perko is a hybrid plant, in the selection of which winter rapeseed was used.

Therefore, perko is close to it in appearance and meaning. Perko blooms in early spring, it is well visited by bees collecting nectar and pollen. The duration of the perko flowering period is about 25 days.

Perco is sown in the autumn in a wide-row way (spacing 45 cm), the seeding rate is 8-12 kg/ha.

Rapeseed honey

Rapeseed honey is fragrant, may be whitish or yellow in color, with a thick consistency. Its features include fast crystallization and poor solubility in water. Rapeseed honey is unsuitable for wintering bees - it easily turns sour.

Main article - Rapeseed honey

 

Belarusian experience of honey collection from rapeseed

In Belarus, large areas are occupied by rapeseed, so Belarusian beekeepers have already gained good experience in obtaining large collections from rapeseed.

(Main article Belarusian experience of honey harvest from rapeseed)