Honey Odyssey

Bee plant, Central Europe

Brassica napus

L.

Oilseed rape, Rapeseed

Oilseed rape is a field crop that flowers in April and May and sometimes escapes onto waste ground. Bee institutes value it for very good nectar and high quality pollen. Its honey has a high glucose share and crystallises within days, and large rape areas can temporarily dilute bumblebees away from nearby wild plants.

Read about its honey

Brassica napus
Photo: Ivar Leidus, CC BY-SA 4.0

What we know

How to recognise it

  • Info Flora describes the sepals of oilseed rape as standing upright and spreading.

    Confirmed fact[1]

When it flowers

  • Info Flora gives the flowering period of oilseed rape in Switzerland as April to May.

    Confirmed fact[1]

Where it grows

  • Oilseed rape grows in arable fields and on waste ground; it is cultivated and occasionally escapes.

    Confirmed fact[1]

What it offers bees

  • The Baden-Württemberg bee forage catalogue calls rapeseed the exception among main crops, offering very good nectar and high quality pollen.

    Reported by the farm[2]

  • A study near Göttingen states that the pollen and nectar of oilseed rape are highly attractive to bees.

    Confirmed fact[3]

  • In the same study, abundance of bumblebees, the main pollinators of cowslip, fell as the amount of oilseed rape in the landscape increased.

    Confirmed fact[3]

  • The Baden-Württemberg catalogue names rapeseed fields, like dandelion meadows, as examples of the mass flowering of many identical nectar rich flowers that large honey flows depend on.

    Reported by the farm[2]

Honey

  • The LAVES bee institute says rapeseed honey can crystallise within a few days.

    Confirmed fact[4]

  • LAVES attributes this fast crystallisation to the higher glucose share of rapeseed honey, given as 41 percent.

    Confirmed fact[4]

People

  • Info Flora classes oilseed rape as a neophyte, a plant that appeared in the region after the discovery of America (after 1500).

    Confirmed fact[1]

Sources

  1. Info Flora. Brassica napus L.. Online species page, Das nationale Daten- und Informationszentrum der Schweizer Flora (text from Flora Helvetica 2018). Link
  2. Ministerium für Ländlichen Raum und Verbraucherschutz Baden-Württemberg. Bienenweidekatalog: Verbesserung der Bienenweide und des Artenreichtums. 6. aktualisierter Nachdruck, Stuttgart, Oktober 2019. Link
  3. Holzschuh A, Dormann CF, Tscharntke T, Steffan-Dewenter I. (2011) Expansion of mass-flowering crops leads to transient pollinator dilution and reduced wild plant pollination. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 278: 3444-3451. Link
  4. Odemer F, von der Ohe W. (2020) Kleine Honigkunde für Einsteiger: Hinweise über die Honiggewinnung und die Honigverarbeitung. LAVES Institut für Bienenkunde Celle. Link

Last checked: 20 October 2026. Every statement on this page was compared with the source it cites.