Cotton as a honey plant

Honey plant cotton, Latin name - G. herbaceum L.. Cotton as a honey plant is an important plant for many regions and countries. The cotton plant has features of honey collection, but the honey plant cotton plant can significantly increase the honey supply of the area. Bees can increase the yield of cotton by pollinating it. But cotton as a honey plant is an unusual plant, and in this article we will consider what a beekeeper should take into account when placing bees in a field with cotton. Read to the end - it will be interesting!

Content

• Description of the honey plant cotton
• What do cotton flowers look like?
• Where cotton grows like a honey plant
• Features of cotton as a honey plant
• When cotton blossoms like a honey plant
• When bees collect nectar from cotton
• Cotton honey productivity
• What are cotton nectaries
• Intrafloral nectaries of cotton
• Extrafloral cotton nectaries
• Pollination of cotton by bees
• Features of honey collection from cotton
• Cotton honey
• Cotton as pollen

 

 

 

Description of the honey plant cotton

What does the honey plant cotton plant look like? The height of the melliferous cotton plant is from 1 to 2 m, it has very branched stems, the leaves on long petioles are alternating, pawled, with 3-5 lobes. The root system of cotton is pivotal, its root goes into the ground to a depth of 30 cm, in some varieties of cotton the root reaches three meters.

The fruit of the cotton plant is a box, sometimes more round or oval in shape, 3-5-parted, cracking along the valves, with numerous dark brown seeds inside it, which are covered on the surface with soft winding hairs - cotton. There are two types of cotton hairs. Cotton hairs are long and fluffy or short and fleecy - the so-called lint, cotton fluff. Cotton seed, covered with a dense skin, contains an embryo, consists of a root and two seed lobes.

What do cotton flowers look like?

Cotton flowers solitary, numerous. The cotton flower consists of a corolla with three to five wide and fused petals and a double five-toothed green calyx, which is surrounded by a three-lobed involucre, it is many times longer than the calyx. Numerous stamens coalesce into a tube. Cotton flowers are large and reach 7.5 cm in diameter. The color of cotton flowers is different, in Egyptian varieties of cotton in the morning on the first day they are bright yellow, and in American varieties of cotton the flowers are white and less often cream or pale yellow (they have a red anthocyanin spot on the inside of the petal), but in the afternoon cotton flowers begin to turn pink or take on a reddish color, and in the evening they tie.

 

 

Where cotton grows like a honey plant

Where cotton can grow or white gold. At present, the honey plant cotton is grown in tropical and subtropical zones in more than 80 countries of the world. Under cotton in the world, 2.5% of the world's agricultural land is occupied, which annually produces approximately 25 million tons of cotton fiber.

The main cotton-growing areas of cultivation in the CIS countries: Uzbekistan (0.9 million tons), Turkmenistan (0.3 million tons), Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, where the main amount of cotton honey is obtained, which is characterized by many valuable qualities .

The main value of cotton is a spinning crop, in addition, cotton seeds are used as raw materials for the production of oil for food and technical purposes. At present, interest in spinning crops is constantly growing due to the growing need for the use of natural fibers and the rejection of the use of synthetic materials in many cases, primarily in clothing. This is especially true in the EU and the USA, where cotton farmers are paid significant subsidies, which means that in Russia, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Azerbaijan, the area under cotton will grow and farmers will need to increase cotton yields, as it is still at a lower level than the world average. And this means that in these regions it will be possible to use the melliferous plant cotton for honey collection and to increase its productivity with the help of bee pollination of cotton.

Features of cotton as a honey plant

As already mentioned under the honey plant, cotton occupies millions of hectares of arable land, therefore it is a valuable honey plant, no less valuable than such honey plants as alfalfa, clover, sweet clover, safflower, horticultural crops (apple, apricot), kermek or camel thorn, sage, motherwort, snakehead .

When cotton blossoms like a honey plant

How long does the flowering period of cotton last? The flowering period of cotton lasts about two months (for early-ripening cotton varieties, the flowering period is shorter, for late-ripening varieties it is longer), in the conditions of Central Asia, the flowering period of cotton lasts from late June to mid-August. In Tajikistan, the beginning of cotton flowering falls on June 5-15 and the mass flowering of cotton ends in September - early October.

In the western regions of Azerbaijan, the flowering of cotton begins on July 10-15 and ends in September - early October.

The main harvest from cotton falls on the period from July 20 to mid-August, and therefore, as a rule, honey collection from cotton does not exceed one month. In some years, the flowering period of cotton shifts by about 5 days in one direction or another. At the same time, nectar from cotton is taken by bees for the most part from bract nectaries.

 

When bees collect nectar from cotton

At the honey collection from cotton, bees fly out of the hives for nectar in the predawn hours and continue to collect nectar until noon, then stop working and fly out again for nectar in the evening from 17 to 20 hours. Weak visits to cotton by bees at lunchtime are not explained by a decrease in nectar secretion, but by negative natural factors, such as high temperatures, dust storms and dry winds. Honey collection from cotton increases after rains and irrigation.

Cotton honey productivity

What is the honey productivity of cotton or how much honey can bees collect from 1 ha of cotton? Intrafloral nectaries of cotton produce nectar with a sugar concentration of 20-25%.

Cotton as honey plant nectar release temperature? Optimal temperatures for nectar extraction by cotton are considered to be 25 - 30 C. In southern Uzbekistan, at a temperature of 35 - 45 C and a low relative humidity of 18 - 20%, the release of nectar by cotton does not stop. A decrease in temperature below 25 C, as well as dry winds and dusty winds, reduce the release of nectar by about half. In dry winds, with a decrease in nectar secretion, the amount of sugar simultaneously increases. At the first frost, the release of nectar by cotton stops.

The honey productivity of cotton, according to the research of the Research Institute of Beekeeping, usually does not go beyond 100 kg. The honey productivity of cotton can increase 1.5-2 times after irrigation and reach more than 200 kg per 1 ha in Central Asia.

Experienced beekeepers get 30-40 kg of marketable honey from one bee colony.

Honey productivity fluctuates greatly by variety, hence the attendance of these cotton varieties by bees is different, and some varieties are not visited at all. Egyptian long-staple varieties are best visited by bees, American ones are worse. This is due to the greater availability of nectaries in the subcup and the greater sugar content of extrafloral nectar (under the influence of evaporation) in Egyptian varieties. It was also noted that under the conditions of Uzbekistan, the honey productivity of early-ripening cotton varieties is higher than that of mid-ripening varieties.

 

What are cotton nectaries

How does cotton honey plant produce nectar? The melliferous cotton plant has two types of nectaries: intrafloral and extrafloral.

Intrafloral nectaries of cotton

In honey plant cotton, intrafloral nectaries consist of a narrow edge of mammillary cells at the base of the inner side of the calyx and are located between the calyx and corolla, while forming a kind of reservoir for the accumulation of nectar. The integument of the flower is a reliable protection against excessive evaporation. The five petals have small gaps at the base of the flower leading down to the nectaries. These gaps are protected by intertwining hairs that prevent small insects from penetrating into them, but do not serve as an obstacle to the thin proboscises of bees and butterflies. From small insects, thrips freely penetrate into the flower, causing great harm to cotton. However, intrafloral nectaries have a deep position, which makes it possible to obtain nectar mainly for long-proboscis bees. To take nectar from a cotton flower, a bee usually sits on the side of the flower and, turning to the calyx, pushes its proboscis between the calyx and the corolla, sucking nectar from the intrafloral nectary. In other cases, bees penetrate to the intrafloral nectaries, crawling between the corolla of the flower and the anthers. The release of nectar by flower nectaries begins long before the opening of the buds and continues after their flowering, when the ovary has already turned into a mature box and the release of nectar by flower nectaries begins at 7 am and continues until 21 pm. Their nectar production stops after the opening of the anthers and the ripening of the fruits.

Extrafloral cotton nectaries

As for the extrafloral nectaries of cotton as a honey plant, some of them are on the subcup, while others are on the leaves. On the subcup in the intervals between the bracts there are three internal nectaries and three more in the upper expanded part of the pedicel under the bracts (external) - a total of six. Internal cotton nectaries are found in both American and Asian cotton species. They are round or heart-shaped. External subcup nectaries are completely absent in Asian cotton plants. With a strong magnification, nectaries are very similar to a small plate, the bottom of which is covered, as it were, with a layer of large shot (tiny papillae). These nectaries in cotton produce abundant nectar that attracts insects.
Leaf nectaries (from 1 to 5) are placed on the lower surface of the main leaf vein.
Leaf nectaries are small depressions, oval, pear-shaped or arrow-shaped, with long grooves going to the base of the leaves. In the tropics, they quickly become moldy and blacken.
The leaf nectaries are most active during the full maturity of the leaves, and they begin to function very early, when only 2-3 true leaves are formed on the plant. Their activity ceases shortly before the death of the leaf.
Under favorable conditions, early in the morning (when evaporation is still weak), rather liquid extrafloral nectar accumulates on the glands in such large drops that it can be tasted. At this time, the bees almost do not visit cotton flowers, but collect honey from leaf nectaries.

A significant amount of nectar is also released by buds and ripening cotton bolls. Unopened buds begin to secrete nectar 8 days before blooming, and little nectar is released in the first days, then its amount in buds increases, reaching a maximum 1-2 days before petals open and on the day of flowering; bolls stop producing nectar 8-10 days before full ripening.

 

Pollination of cotton by bees

What type of cotton pollination? Despite the fact that cotton is a honey plant, cotton flowers are quite capable of self-pollination. Since the cracking of the anthers and the readiness of the stigmas to receive pollen is often observed even before the flower opens. It is in this case that self-pollination and subsequent self-fertilization of cotton occurs, which happens quite often. It would seem that self-pollination of cotton exists, and the role of bees in the pollination of cotton is limited, is it so?

With cross-pollination of cotton flowers, the seed yield increases, and most importantly, it improves the quality of the fiber, thereby increasing the grade of raw cotton. When pollinated by bees, cotton yield increases by 20-25%. So, experiments on bee pollination in Tajikistan showed that when pollinating cotton by bees, the weight of the boll increases by 12-18%, the number of seeds increases by 6%, the weight of seeds increases by 3-8%, the weight of cotton fiber increases by 40%. At the same time, after pollination by bees, the fruits ripen 5-9 days earlier than self-pollinated cotton flowers.

However, organizing the pollination of cotton by bees is not as simple as it seems and has a number of features that are not available when exporting bees to other crops. How to achieve effective pollination, when and how to take bees out and place them on the field, how many bees are needed for pollination, and much more that needs to be taken into account when organizing pollination of cotton by bees.

Features of honey collection from cotton

You can also note some more features of cotton as a honey plant.
And if honey plant cotton is often sown in the same field, nitrogen fertilizer is often used, especially urea, and also in the event of a drought without irrigation, cotton significantly reduces the release of nectar.
For this reason, beekeepers are advised to first bring the control hives to different places in the field, weigh them in a day, and take the apiary to the place where the weight gain is maximum.

Cotton honey plants are often chemically treated and beekeepers should be prepared and take steps to prevent bee poisoning.

 

Cotton honey

Cotton honey is light, delicate in taste (when fully ripe) and in quality is not inferior to the best varieties of honey such as clover, phacelia, sainfoin honey. More details about cotton honey.

Cotton as pollen

How good is cotton honey plant as a pollen plant? In addition to nectar, bees sometimes take dirty-creamy pollen from cotton, but they spend a lot of time on it and often lose it in flight.
Cotton pollen cannot be considered useful for bees, they often starve on this pollen, do not process it into bee bread and stop breeding brood.
In experiments under insulators, it was observed that, after some time, the collected cotton pollen of bees is immured with propolis so that it does not deteriorate in the hive. It is suggested that bees do not produce pollen from cotton pollen because it contains the harmful substance gossypol, which is also found in cotton seeds. Perhaps this explains the limited attendance by bees of the intrafloral nectaries of a cotton plant in the conditions of a free choice of honey plants. Nevertheless, on a cotton field, bees can collect 2-3 kg of pollen during the time when cotton blooms, but how much it can be consumed by a person is still a moot point.

But there are varieties of cotton in which the bees can quite normally form a bee and carry it to the hive.