safe plants

[hypostatic]

hi all, trying to hget some info in regards to honey from this plant.

Echium pininana & Echium Vulgare.

I know they can cause skin irritation but wondering if there is any effects on eating the honey collected from these?

Am asking as i was gonna plant a load of these around my apiary as i have found out that they give a higher yield of honey which helps for stores.

Dave

[gavin]

Viper's bugloss is a superb plant for bees of all types. I wouldn't hesitate about growing some. You'll be feeding the bumble bees for miles around as well as your honeybees. I would hesitate about growing tens of hectares of it as the honey does contain alkaloids, in common with some other species in this family. Borage is one, but that doesn't stop folk producing and selling decent honey crops from it as the risk is low.

See here for info on the alkaloids (which are particularly high in the pollen), but that shouldn't stop you planting some.

http://www.fzi.uni-freiburg.de/pdf/44_1.pdf

These guys imply that you should be careful with honeys containing significant amounts of these alkaloids:

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jf0114482

[gavin]

Warnings from Oz/NZ on honey from Paterson's Curse, a related species of Echium.

http://www.foodstandards.gov.au/consumer/chemicals/patersonscurse/pages/default.aspx