As a Honey Plant, Flowering and Nectar Secretion Characteristics of Two Functional Used Species in Korea.

Robinia pseudoacacia Lin. is a representative honey plant and its honey accounted for 70 percent of total honey product in Korea. However, apiculture industry was desperate for a replacement for the R. pseudoacacia Lin. As honey plant because, that species was sharply deteriorated by various reasons just like ageing and damages by yellow leaves and Oboloditlosis robiniae.
Therefore, various species were investigated for replacement R. pseudoacacia Lin. and, particularly, functionally edible and medicinal plants were used material of this study. Amount of flowering and nectar secretion were analyzed as main factor for honey plant.
Hovenia dulcis var. koreana Nakai and Acanthopanax senticosus Harms used medicine for liver and arthritis enhancement were flowering for 17 and 22 days, respectively. Those flowering periods were longer than that of R. pseudoacacia Lin.. The number of flowers per individual tree of H. dulcis var. koreana Nakai were estimated 665,000 ea and that amount was higher value than R. pseudoacacia Lin.(640,000 ea) but amount of flowering of A. senticosus Harms shown 21,000 ea.
The amount of nectar secretion per flower of H. dulcis var. koreana Nakai and A. senticosus Harms were 4.15±1.11µL and 3.51±2.12µL respectively. That result was higher than value of R. pseudoacacia Lin., 2.20±1.18µL.
In analysis of antioxidant activity using DPPH method, their two species honey shown twice as much activity than honey of R. pseudoacacia Lin.. Also, their honey showed similar trend in analysis of tyrosinase inhibition activity.
In conclusion, H. dulcis var. koreana Nakai and A. senticosus Harms could be developed a high valuable honey plant because those species can produce both the quantity and quality of honey to grow.