Tag: foraging

Best Bee-Friendly Flowers (Evidence-Based)

Best Bee-Friendly Flowers (Evidence-Based)

Spring is in the air and many gardeners are beginning to think about what to plant.

But beware – many cultivated garden plants have been carefully bred for their colour and flower size not their pollen and nectar loads and the results is that many are sterile and no good for bees.

Echium vulgare (vipers bugloss)
No. 1 – Echium vulgare (vipers bugloss)
Photo courtesy of rosybee

So which garden plants are best for bees? Which flowers produce the most nectar and pollen per square metre over the year?  These are the types of question that rosybee (online plant nursery in Oxfordshire that sells plants for bees) set out to answer and the results were published in the March 2015 edition of the BBKA News.

Borage (Borago officinalis)
No. 2 – Borage (Borago officinalis)

This research ranked garden flowers by taking the average number of bees observed per square meter and multiplying this by the number of weeks the plant was in flower.  Of the 45 flowers tested the research ranked Echium vulgare as the best plant for bees and the next three were Borage, Hyssop and Helenium autumnale.

Helenium autumnale
No. 3 – Helenium autumnale

Below is a snap shot of the results but the full report is well worth a read (link to research).

Best Bee Friendly Flowers
Best Bee-Friendly Flowers (rosybee research)

I think the borage will work best for me (photo further up) and I have tracked some down. It can be used as a herb too.  I’ll take photos with bees on it in due course and encourage neighbours to take cuttings.

Hyssopus officinalis
No. 4 – Hyssop (Hyssopus officinalis) – Photo courtesy of rosybee

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  • If you live in the UK and want some bee-friendly plants delivered to your door, then the rosybee website and plants are well worth a look.  It is also inspiring to read about their creation of a 6 acre bee haven using sustainable methods – a dream of many beekeepers!
  • Internal page on Bee Friendly Plants & Flowers

Wild Garlic Pesto & Pasta

Spring is definitely in the air (well, when the clouds get out of the way). This means the bees larder of nectar-hunting opportunities has become much more succulent. It’s the equivalent of shopping for-frozen-fishfingers-at-Farmfoods in February to middle-class-manchego-buying-at-Waitrose in May.

So the bees are smugly stuffing their faces now – but they aren’t the only ones who can benefit from the sweet smell of spring! Yes, it’s time to go ‘native’, pretend we’re Bear Gryls and get out FORAGING again. This is not only a chance to scoff free food but an opportunity to shred the office uniform, be at one with nature and look cool in front of your wife with your obvious manliness.

Yes, foraging might be about walking through woods and hunting out flowers but this is no Timotei advert. It’s blooming DANGEROUS!  There’s no sell-by-date on these plants. A tasty looking blossom could easily turn you into a vomiting-Exorcist-impressionist. But hey ho, it’s fun!!!

One of my favourite forage foods is wild garlic which is in blossom with white flowers right now.

Wild Garlic And Bluebells
Wild Garlic And Bluebells

The flower is edible too – making great salad decoration and the opportunity to impress friends and readers of this blog with my daring (though I doubt you would see this as one of the items you have to eat on a bushtucker trial in “I’m a celebrity … get me out of here”)!

Wild Garlic In Mouth
Wild Garlic In Mouth

Wild Garlic Pesto Recipe

  • 1 large bunch of wild garlic, washed
  • 60gms pine nuts, toasted (cashew nuts are cheaper)
  • 60gms parmesan cheese (other Italian hard cheeses are cheaper)
  • 150mls olive oil
  • Squeeze of lemon juice
  • Pepper

Method: Place all the ingredients into a food processor, except the olive oil, and mix for a couple of minutes then pour in the olive oil and mix again.

Eat with pasta and add single cream! Delicious.

Honeybees On Apple Blossom

And here’s one of my honeybees on another Spring flower.

Honeybee on apple blossom
Honeybee on apple blossom

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Regaining my sanity without bees

Just a quick update on the bees:  they took down 14Kg of sugar in October, so that should help them through the winter.  On my last inspection I could not find the new Queen even though she was marked.  There were 43 varroa on the board over 9 days and this calculates at 660-1,300 varroa in the hive – too many.  There’s not much I can do now.  Oxalic acid in Dec/Jan and hope there’s a Queen in there.  I need to get better at this.

However, I am finding some other ways of regaining my sanity.  I saw a bloke picking some berries and asked him what they were.  He explained they were sloes.  I have tried my friends sloe gin in the past, so thought I would give it a go.  Heidi and  I picked 1kg of sloes at the weekend and made some sloe gin. Recipe: 750ml gin, 500g sloes, 340g sugar.  Have to resist drinking it for 3 months.  Using the liquer as an ingredient in crumble and mixing the left over fruit with dark chocolate sound like good ideas too. (Nat – do you have any sloe gin cocktail recipes you can share!)

sloe gin

I have also really enjoyed gardening (now that I have a garden for the first time in my life).  It’s a lot less stressful than beekeeping.  I planted some honeysuckle at the weekend.

Planting honeysuckle

I would love to hear summaries of your 2012 bee experiences.  Have I been a terrible beekeeper (possibly losing both my colonies even before Winter), or has my experience been common this year?

You might not hear anything from me for a while.  Heidi is due on 18 November.

Let’s hope I am better at babies than bees.

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Is Foraging The Answer (to regaining my sanity)?

I am still alive!  Who would have guessed that foraging is like an extreme sport with more bravado than a skate boarding park?  Is that a delicious, edible plant, or a deadly looky-likey?  You first!

Whilst my nearly-wife ate blackberries from a bramble for the first time last year I have to admit that I am not much further behind in the foraging stakes.  Despite the advantages of growing up in the countryside and a Dad who studied botany I have walked past wild garlic and other wild foods all my life.

The half-day foraging session by Dave Hamilton was inspirational and has challenged my food boundaries.  This introduction has made me want to spend time on the process of finding my food and cooking it rather than a quick trip to the supermarket so that I can spend my spare time in front of the TV.  Foraging will provide food for my soul as well as my body!

Dave Hamilton explaining how to make tea from pine needles

Me frying and eating Woods Ear mushrooms
 gardner and forager  Eating Woods Ear

My new resolution is to buy Food For Free (classic foraging text by Richard Mabey) and go foraging one day a month for nuts, berries, fungi, leaves and birch sap.  Well, that’s the plan.  Bees forage every day through necessity. I hope I am strong-willed enough to do this once a month!

So, what did we learn?  We tried numerous foods but here are my favourites.

Wild garlic: Eat the leaves and flowers. Add to salads, make pesto Sorrel: Tastes fresh and lemony.  Add to salad or eat with fish Dead Nettles (not to   be confused with regular nettles that have died): Squeeze the flowers and suck out the nectar
 Wild Garlic Flower  Sorrel  Dead Nettle Flower

Warning: Make sure the food you eat has not been sprayed with pesticides; take a bottle of water with you to wash the food; know what you’re doing.  It’s this last one that’s the stumbling block!

Books written by Dave Hamilton and his brother Andy:

Recommended links:

You might like to read some of my other foraging posts.

A Wild Food Walk

For Christmas, my nearly-wife (3 weeks and not counting), bought me a Wild Food Walk – but will it improve my sanity or lead to a new obsession?  I need to get to Ashton Court Estate (5 minutes drive … oops 30 minutes walk) by 1.30pm to meet our leader Andy Hamilton.  You can check his website Self-Sufficientish or read to see how it went at Is Foraging The Answer (to regaining my sanity).