Black mulberry
A wind-pollinated fruit tree without nectar that offers a little spring pollen. Bees may suck juice from split ripe fruit in summer, but it has no honey value.
- Nectar
- None
- Pollen
- Low
- Flowering
- JanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec
- Height
- 6-10 m
- Life cycle
- Perennial
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Black mulberry comes from Iran and the surrounding area and is a long-lived tree that has been grown for its fruit in Anatolia for thousands of years. Its flowers are short, greenish spikes and are wind-pollinated. It gives no nectar; the amount of pollen is also small for bees and is mostly collected only when other sources are scarce.
Flowering
It flowers briefly in April-May, together with leaf-out.
Honey and pollen
It is not a honey source. When the fruits ripen in June-July and split or fall, bees and wasps may suck the juice. This sugar source is not a real flow; fruit juice carried into the hive can ferment quickly and spoil the quality of the honey.
Note for the beekeeper
In gardens with mulberry trees, wasp pressure increases during the fruit season; reducing the entrances of weak colonies cuts down robbing. The tree's value for beekeeping is limited to providing shade.