Buckwheat

These are cereal crops related to pseudograin, the seeds work fine as a human food and partly to animal feed. Seeds are readily eaten by songbirds. Buckwheat introduced into the culture more than 5 thousand years ago. Buckwheat is the most important honey plant for many regions of Russia with light sandy loam soil. The feed base of beekeeping and honey production there largely depends on the state of buckwheatgrowing. In favorable years, up to 80 kg of honey is obtained from 1 hectare of crops in areas with normal moisture (in arid regions, honey collection from buckwheat is extremely unstable). As a crosspollinated, mainly entomophilous plant (pollinated by insects), buckwheat requires at least 2–2.5 bee families per hectare, which also provides up to 70% of seed production. Buckwheat flowers give a lot of nectar and greenishyellow pollen.