River Red Gum is flowering where we have hives in the northern country of Victoria. It hasn’t flowered well for us for several years so we are excited about the possibilities. When checking hives two weeks ago, there was excellent brood and the brood chambers had large areas of creamy pollen stored in them. This is typical of a Red Gum flowering, in the first phase the bees collect huge amounts of pollen which is of the highest quality. Even if no nectar is yielded, this pollen is most valued for keeping a good store when the summer flowering Ironbark and then the Grey Box flower. As Ironbark is a pollen deficient species, this pollen keeps the hives strong for a long time.
Red Gum flowers yield copious amounts of nectar when the weather is hot to very hot. Bees can fill three boxes of honey on a week on a good flow and there is a mad scramble to take them off and to add extra boxes at this time. The honey is of the highest quality and is an excellent table variety. We have had some good hot weather recently so it will be interesting to see if there is honey there in the new year.