This Wednesday, David Tarpy & Jen Keller of the NC State University Apiculture Program and I began an exploratory project to determine if honey bees will make honey from flowering tobacco, and if so, what the properties of that honey are.
Night flying moths, including the adults of tobacco & tomato hornworms, are probably the most important pollinators of long, narrow tobacco flowers. A few past studies have observed honey bees foraging at untopped tobacco, and a few North Carolina beekeepers have recounted anecdotes of making or tasting tobacco honey.
We started by brining five small hives to the Oxford Tobacco Research Station.
Then, Jen and David unloaded the bees.
Opening the hive entrances which had been closed for transport.
An NC State appropriate color combination.
A healthy bee hive.
Next, queen excluders were placed between the base of the hive and the super to prevent eggs from being laid and encourage the bees to fill the super with honey.
Five hives, ready to go!
These hives were placed near a 1.2 acre plot of tobacco plants belonging to Ramsey Lewis, NC State tobacco breeder, who is selecting for black shank disease resistance. The plants will not be harvested or topped. Starting next week, we will visit this field weekly, walking eight 100 foot transects to determine if the honey bees are foraging at tobacco flowers. If we observe bees foraging and the colonies produce honey, we will then extract it and assess quality and flavor.
Update
We visited the bees last Wednesday, July 25th and walked 10, 100 ft transects. We did not observe any bees foraging yet, but the plants are currently at ~30% bloom. The hives appear active, so we will continue to monitor them for at least 3 more weeks.
Any updates on the tobacco honey project?
Will – The bees didn’t make any honey in the month they were next to the tobacco field. Bees can forage long distances, but this early experiment wasn’t promising.