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I've been keeping this blog for all of my beekeeping years and I am beginning my 19th year of beekeeping in April 2024. Now there are more than 1300 posts on this blog. Please use the search bar below to search the blog for other posts on a subject in which you are interested. You can also click on the "label" at the end of a post and all posts with that label will show up. At the very bottom of this page is a list of all the labels I've used.

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Friday, May 04, 2007

The Privet Bloom has Begun

Jennifer Berry in the most recent Georgia Bee Letter mentions that the tulip poplar flow is minimum due to the freeze in early April but that the privet and blackberry flow are on now and are doing well. In my woods behind my house, the tulip poplars appear to be blooming well, but I'm not a UGa biologist like Jennifer. The tulip poplars started blooming just before the bad April frost, but many blooms continue and it is now May.

My backyard just behind the deck where the bees are is full of privet hedge. Here you see a small part of the privet hedge.
The flowers are on every branch and are just beginning to bloom. I saw bees in the privet today, but they were too high in the hedge for me to get a picture.

Here is privet in bud.

Here are opened flowers - aren't they beautiful and they smell lovely as well. Privet, however, is an invasive plant and is considered a weed in Georgia.
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5 comments:

  1. Your backyard looks lovely Linda with all those trees in the back ground. Privet is a noxious weed here in NZ also, it grows anywhere in out temperate climate and when it is flowering people with asthma or other breathing difficulties really suffer. A friend of mine who happens to be Irish, grows it as a hedge but always cuts the flowers off so it doesn`t spread - it makes a lovely hedge but I don`t know about the nice smell, I think it stinks !!

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  2. Maybe you have a different variety in New Zealand. Ours is certainly a weed, but it smells sweet and I wouldn't use the word "stink" to apply to it at all.

    Hope you are doing well after your surgery....
    Best wishes, Linda

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  3. I have tons of Privet hedge on my property here in N. Alabama, and I'm a little bit afraid after some things I have read. Some people claim the privet hedge makes the honey taste bad, others love it. Is this an opinion thing or are there different varieties or something? What people call 'privet hedge' here can grow ten or twenty feet high and really looks like a tree.

    Oh, and this is my first year keeping bees so I am especially nervous!

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  4. Anonymous2:16 PM

    There are over 50 verities of ligustrum (privet hedge). Some verities make very little nectur and some make a lot. Some make a very light, almost clear, very sweet smelling, think perfume, honey. The Chinese privet hedge (ligustrum sinense) does that. It grows into a small tree 15 to 20 feet high. Ligustrum ovalifolium makes a dark, somewhat bitter, honey. This is the privet hedge most people are familiar with as it comes from around the Mediterranean and grows to about 10 feet high and everyone makes hedges with it. The best honey producer by far is ligustrum japonicum. Grows into a 30 to 40 foot tall tree and gives a light golden honey with a lite floral taste. Very productive in July in SC when very little else is blooming.

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  5. We have some 50 Year Old+ Ligustrum lucidum(Chinese Privet) here in N. California, and they are about 30’ tall with great branch form; I’ve read they make outstanding Bonsai, and I can see that potential, but we’ve gone the other direction with our gargantuan specimens.
    These, along with Lavenders, save our Bee’s bacon in August at the outset of our late Summer/Fall nectar dearth due to dryness.
    Makes deep, dark shade too.
    This plant does have a fair amount of seedlings below it, but they’re easy to eliminate; and birds spread them a bit but they’re easily mown when young.
    I like the fragrance a lot, fortunately.

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