Walk past any big stand of ivy in Kent in September and, if it's warm enough, you'll hear it before you see it: an absolute roar of bees. Ivy is one of the last major nectar sources of the year, flowering just as most other forage is finishing, and my bees treat it like it's the last bus home.
Ivy nectar is unusual stuff. It's high in glucose, which means ivy honey granulates (sets solid) very quickly, sometimes within days of being capped in the comb. Left in the hive, this isn't a problem at all, the bees can still use it over winter, but it does mean I have to think differently about timing if I want to harvest any of it. Leave it too long and it can set hard in the comb, which makes extracting almost impossible.
Most years I don't actually take an ivy honey crop. I prefer to leave it for the bees, since it's exactly the kind of dense, quick-to-store food they need heading into the colder months. But it's worth knowing about, because if you do ever see 'ivy honey' for sale, it tends to be thick, almost fudgy in texture, with a distinctive, slightly savoury or mineral edge to the flavour that's completely different to our usual summer honey. Some people love it, some find it a bit much. It's certainly memorable.
Ivy also matters for a less obvious reason: it's one of the last chances for the bees to top up their winter stores naturally before I start thinking about feeding. Watching the ivy flow each September gives me a good sense of how well-stocked the hives already are, and how much, if any, feeding they're likely to need going into autumn.
So if your garden or hedgerow has ivy in it, maybe leave it be this autumn. It looks a bit scruffy, I know, but for a few weeks in September it's doing more for the local bee population than almost anything else flowering.
Happy beekeeping from Penshurst Bees!