they tell me that pollinating pumpkin kills your honey production

[adamant]

i read somewhere that putting bees on pumpkin really hurts your honey production! what is your guys feeling on that?

[AliciaH]

I, too, would really love information on this.  I have always had the impression (word of mouth) that pumpkins provided pollen (low in nutrition for the bees?) but not a lot of nectar.  But we have a local honey vendor that supplies pumpkin honey.  So how does that happen?

[FRAMEshift]

How do you know that "pumpkin honey" was made with nectar from pumpkins?.  I'm always skeptical of claims of pure <insert name of tree or flower> honey.    Unless you are following each bee to see where they go, it's a dubious claim.  Sometimes you can tell by a distinctive taste, smell, or color of the honey that it contains at least some nectar from particular plants, but even if your hive was sitting in the middle of a giant pumpkin patch, you can't know that it's really pumpkin honey.... as far as I know.

[Joe D]

Thats right Frame, bees will get pollen and nectar from most any flower.  I have a pic of a bee on clover on my label but its called wild flower honey.



Joe

[asprince]

Pumpkins, squash, melons and etc. do not provide much nectar. I speak from experience because I pollinate squash and cantaloupes. If it were not for the pollination fees, I would not put them on these crops. They do get pollen.

Good Luck,

Steve   

[adamant]

Pumpkins, squash, melons and etc. do not provide much nectar. I speak from experience because I pollinate squash and cantaloupes. If it were not for the pollination fees, I would not put them on these crops. They do get pollen.

Good Luck,

Steve   

howabout if the farm is full of mature weeds that border the property? will that help the bees? i do remember pumpkin drain the resources of the hive!

[kingbee]

http://www.ent.uga.edu/bees/pollination/crop-pollination.html

If your paid to pollinate any member of the melon or squash family, charge enough to buy yourself some sugar, your bees will need it.  Without wild flowers and plenty of them growing in the same area bees could starve in the midst of 1,000s of acres of melons and squash. 

I don't know about now, but years ago it was customary to mow all the plants competing with the melon blossoms for the attention of bees.  This was the only way the farmer had to ensure that your bees the farmer was paying for worked the farmer's melons.  In other words you have to force the bees to work melons, or else force the bees to die from starvation

[theriverhawk]

I had 7 hives over a pumpkin farm for a few years.  Never noticed a difference.  Now, my situation may be different that yours because there's not much of an actual honey flow during the blooming of pumpkins here in Alabama unless there is cotton nearby.  NJ may be very different.