I have this plant called myrtle spurge in my yard. It causes blistering rash like poison ivy, but worse. I’ve tried to kill it, but I would have to crop dust it with glyphosate for years to be rid of it completely. And I’m not going to use that much roundup.
Is there a danger that bees will pick up irritating chemicals from the flowers? And put that in the honey? Honeybees are visiting these plants.
Posted May 7, 2018, 5:19 PM UTC
Unless you have acres of it the amount of nectar it produces is not going to be a drop in the bucket to what the bees collect. It will be so diluted it won't matter.
I’m new at this and planning to set my bees up in a yard that has plenty of bee friendly plants in a 3 mile radius, including acres of palmettos. However the yard around the house is also full of Azaleas. Thoughts?
Honey bees don't tend to visit azaleas. Bumble bees will and do so often but honey bees just tend to ignore them.
keep an eye on the plant get a long pole and knock the flowers down or off which ever you can do.
I found a writeup from CSU's veterinary school, here, which says that if bees feed heavily on the plant, their honey will taste bitter due to diterpenoids. However, no mention is made of this being harmful to humans. Do you have a whole lot of it around? Is there a lack of other things for the bees to forage from?
I guess that’s good news. Presumably they’d mention if it was harmful. My plant isn’t that exact species, but it’s close.
I don’t have a lot of it, and there are many other nectar sources right now. But I don’t know what is around in the nearby areas. I think the builder of my subdivision bought that plant in bulk as a cheap landscaping cover. I see lots of it around and nobody can get rid of it easily. Super invasive and the seeds stay in the soil for years.
This is the species I have. https://bouldercolorado.gov/ipm/noxious-weeds-myrtle-spurge
Its apparently a noxious weed in Colorado and I am required to pull it all out. I guess I know what I'm doing on saturday morning.
It has a waxy cuticle like a cactus, and roundup doesn't even work that well. Ugh.