Article written by Madeline Wimmer, UMN Extension Educator - Fruit Production
Image: A participant in the 2025 Upper Midwest Honeyberry Academy holds out a small handful of honeyberries during harvest.
Last week, growers from the Upper Midwest, Nebraska, and Ohio gathered to learn more about the production of an emerging blue fruit crop known by two main common names: honeyberries and haskap (Lonicera caerulea).
Introduction:
Honeyberries get their name, not because they taste like honey, but because they originate from the honeysuckle family (Lonicera spp.). Honeyberries grow well in cold climates as most varieties can survive winter and receive enough chilling hours for production in USDA Growing Zone regions 2–7; although optimal production may decline in regions warmer than Zone 6 or 7.
As a crop, honeyberries have historically been grown in regions of Russia, northern China, and Japan as a processing fruit incorporated into products like jams, wine, and vodka. With its following, multiple plant breeding efforts have taken place at various points globally to improve honeyberry varieties for production.
The honeyberries many people grow today in Minnesota—varieties like Tundra, Aurora, and Boreal Beast—were developed through efforts from plant breeder and researcher Bob Bors, now an emeritus professor from the University of Saskatchewan, Canada.
Bob bred honeyberries for over 20 years, until he retired in 2024. Throughout his research, he collected germplasm (plants used for breeding) from wild Canadian honeyberry plants, along with plant collections from Russia, Japan, and Maxine Thompson, a retired fruit breeder from Oregon State University known for her plant breeding.
The carefully planned crosses from these plants led to a number of different varieties with various improvements related to fruit quality and management. This also helped to pave the way for commercial growers in Minnesota to start growing honeyberries as a viable crop.
Minnesota honeyberry growing sites on the map.
Image: There are a number of growers that list honeyberries as a crop they grow on the Minnesota Grown website directory.
Today, the Minnesota Grown website lists 11 different farms that solely grow or have incorporated honeyberries into their production. Because the industry is young, growers are still pioneering best practices for management, with limited opportunities to learn and grow their production sites.
To meet this need, the University of Minnesota (UMN) Extension partnered with the University of Wisconsin (UW) Extension Horticulture and Emerging Crops team to create an educational event all about honeyberry production.
This included in-person presentations from two honeyberry experts: Bob Bors and Zach Miller, a researcher from Montana State University. The event was hosted by Haskap Minnesota, a two acre honeyberry farm located in Stillwater, Minnesota.
An afternoon grower panel highlighted on-farm practices at Haskap Minnesota, Honeyberries U.S.A., Walking Plants Orchard, and Schoen Valley Orchard, along with Zach Miller. There also were a number of presentations from UMN Extension and UW Extension, including the online app SeedLinked, which is a platform for growers to share feedback about various honeyberry varieties.
More about honeyberries:
Images: Ripe honeyberries ready for fresh eating (left) and honeyberries before harvest on the shrub (right).
Biology:
Honeyberries grow as a woody shrub, somewhat similar to blueberries, but the wood/branches are much more flexible. It produces yellow bell-like flowers on one-year-old and older branches. The flowers point downward and are especially hardy, with critical temperatures as low as 18 degrees Fahrenheit at full bloom. The blue fruit includes two berries coupled together with a wide range of shapes and flavors.
Invasive potential:
Evaluations done through the Minnesota Department of Agriculture (MDA) have more recently evaluated honeyberries for their invasive potential given that there are species of honeysuckle that are invasive.
So far the results are inconclusive, with no strong evidence that honeyberries are an invasive threat to Minnesota ecology.
Pollination requirements and varieties:
Images: Honeyberry flowers often are in pairs with each flower’s ovule needing to be fertilized for a successful fruit set.
Honeyberries generally bloom in either April or May in Minnesota depending on the growing region.
Honeyberries are insect pollinated and require cross pollination, meaning they cannot use their own pollen to fertilize their flowers and produce fruit. Honeyberries need a second variety, but if they’re too closely related, pollen may also be rejected (a condition known as gametophytic self-incompatibility).
Growers may benefit from building up pollinator habitat and resources to support early pollinator activity and fruit set. Bob Bors has emphasized the effectiveness of bumblebees in honeyberry pollination, potentially because of their tendency to travel and bumble between rows.
Many plant nurseries also have honeyberry variety compatibility charts to help growers determine which varieties to purchase. Compatible variety bloom windows also need to overlap for fresh pollen to get from one flower to another functioning flower.
Harvest parameters:
Honeyberries start off green after petal fall and continue to enlarge and eventually begin to change color. It takes around two weeks, weather dependent, for berries to reach maturity and optimal harvest parameters (i.e., sugar and acid balance, flavor and aroma compounds, texture).
Specialists like Zach Miller from Montana State recommend tasting berries as a primary way to determine ripeness, and a refractometer can be used for reference. Growers supplying berries to wine makers should be aware, however, the amount of sugar that makes up the total soluble solids in honeyberries is generally less than grape berries, for example. A minimum goal for brix in honeyberries would be around 15 degrees Brix.
Honeyberries are susceptible to “shatter”, or fruit drop, especially on windy sites. This feature can make honeyberries conducive to harvesting by shaking (see below). Harvesting during dry conditions tends to be best for the berry quality and harvesting equipment.
Pest management:
Oftentimes, honeyberries can be grown with fairly low inputs compared to other crops. Powdery mildew is one pathogen category that has been reported to affect honeyberry leaves; although infections are usually mild.
Some research is currently being done looking at the potentials of Spotted Wing Drosophila (SWD) risk to honeyberries, while simultaneously looking at the impact of perimeter honeysuckle species as an alternative SWD host. Through this research, early findings have located some SWD within honeyberry fruit as well as wild honeysuckle found in forest edges.
The biggest pest of concern is wildlife, in which birds are at the top of the list. There are a lot of bird deterrents out there, but various netting arrangements (over the row or perimeter netting) are often the most effective. Be sure to think about netting when considering the layout for the planting.
Establishment considerations:
Similar to planning for establishing other fruit crops, getting a soil test is informative to learning more about your soil profile. Honeyberries can tolerate soil pH as high as 8.0 without major issues.
Map out the planting to ensure compatible cultivars aren’t too far away, and be sure to leave a wide enough aisle between the shrubs to leave room for equipment and traffic. Make a plan for your netting, and think about future planting when determining how large of an area to net for perimeter netting installments.
As mentioned earlier, honeyberry variety selection is especially important in regards to pollination requirements, as well as other traits related to your site-specific goals and operation.
Event recap:
Morning harvest with George Terway and harvest crew:
Image: Honeyberry grower George Terwey harvests honeyberries through shaking and using a movable frame with harvest bins on each side to collect berries into the angled basins below the shrubs. After berries are collected into the basins, they are lifted using a hinge and poured directly into the harvest bins (yellow). Honeyberries planted on raised bed rows can improve harvest into angled basins.
We gathered in the morning and started the day by walking up to the field where a crew used specialized equipment to shake the berries from the shrubs into angled bins, which were then transferred to a line that sorted berries from debris before storage.
There are a number of ways to shake the plants, including hand-harvesting into a large bin, such as a half-sized round basin. Plants can alternatively be shaken using a vibrating fork like an olive harvester; and there are a number of growers who have created harvesters to shake the shrubs, including modified reciprocating saws, though some of these can be physically demanding to use.
Image: Haskap Minnesota uses a machine to sort fruit from debris like leaves and stems.
Honeyberries have fairly thin skins, which makes them pleasant to consume, but also presents a challenge for producing fresh berries, which are best harvested by hand, rather than mechanically. Because many non-U-pick farms tend to freeze berries, the mechanical harvesting works well for their purposes. After harvesting, the fruit does well to be cooled down during hot harvest conditions.
Plant breeding with Bob Bors:
Bob took time to describe his story as a plant breeder and how he began working with honeyberries as a crop during the early 2000’s. Some of his goals for a variety included staggering the ripening windows to allow for sequential harvesting. He also talked about growing Juneberries, or Saskatoons, Honeyberries, and Tart Cherries as a trio crop system based on the times of harvest.
Bob’s journey in collecting honeyberries and collaborating globally with other honeyberry breeders brought about varieties like the Indigo series; Tundra and Borealis; Aurora; and the Boreal Series (B. Blizzard, B. Beauty, B. Beast, B. Bliss). Even though Bob is retired, he continues to stay engaged with fruit-related research.
Resources:
Haskap (University of Saskatchewan)
Montana State University research highlights with Zach Miller:
Zach Miller has done a number of studies on honeyberry production in Montana, gauging optimal production goals like ideal brix (15 degrees) for harvest, along with crop estimates plateauing out around 4–5 tons per acre (8–12 lbs per plant).
He emphasized that honeyberries are typically larger on younger wood, and that he practices installing drip irrigation on a suspending wire off the ground, along the row. This way, the irrigation hose is exposed and easily inspected for breaks.
Some discussion about the balance between achieving berry size, quality composition, and yield took place in consideration of management practices like pruning, which also aims to remove low-hanging branches that could touch the ground and get in the way of harvesting equipment.
Regarding marketing honeyberries, Zach also mentioned that, while the number of hours and input to harvest honeyberries by hand for fresh market may be more than mechanical harvesting or shaking, the price for fresh haskap can be more than the frozen market.
Resources:
Zach Miller (Montana State University)
Labor Estimates for Small-Scale Haskap Production (Montana State University)
Haskap Variety Evaluation (Montana State University)
Best practices for food safety on U-Pick farms with Annalisa Hultberg:
Annalisa also mentioned that Minnesota U-Pick farms may be interested in looking into getting an agritourism sign that informs visitors about on-farm liability.
Resources:
Protecting your farm and your guests: understanding agritourism liability in Minnesota
Minnesota farmers advocate for agritourism liability reform
Overview of Minnesota Grown with Mallory Forseth:
Minnesota Grown is a resource all farms can utilize and benefit from. It provides the opportunity for growers to list their farm on the MN Grown website directory, and can assist with marketing cost sharing. Mallory presented this information to growers and shared the resources below to help new growers register and learn more.
Resources:
Minnesota Grown Grower Directory
Minnesota Grown Programs for Growers
Results of MDA production study with Phil Stowe:
As a part of a Sustainable Agriculture Demonstration Grant, Phil Stowe of Walking Plants Orchard, along with a number of other honeyberry growers, conducted an on-farm research trial to measure yields as related to site-specific conditions (e.g., bloom times, soil, and labor hours).
This podcast available from UW Extension’s Emerging Crops team that highlights some of Phil’s practices and on-farm research:
The Cutting Edge Podcast Episode #51: Honeyberry Production
Farmer panel:
Why aren’t there more fruits at the market? What’s the best deterrent for birds and wildlife? Can honeyberries winter kill? We asked these questions during the farmer panel and received a number of answers based on grower specific experiences.
To respond simply, honeyberries can be expensive to pick by hand and are a newer crop, which might be why they’re uncommon in Minnesota farmers’ markets. Netting installments—perimeter netting or over-the-row netting—are currently the most effective way to deter birds from damaging and eating berries. When honeyberries appear winter killed, it’s sometimes due to girdling damage that goes unnoticed at the plant base. With winter kill, growers on this panel reported shoot dieback to be more common.
Seedlinked discussion with Nico Enjalbert and Steffen Mirsky:
Seedlinked is one online site that has evaluations of many honeyberry cultivars and can be a good place to start, in addition to talking with nurseries and other local farmers when considering which varieties to grow.
Haskap varieties differ slightly from one another based on fruit shape, size, color, texture, and how early they begin to grow; but what about the plants themselves? Differences in shrub varieties also relate to how upright they grow, how easily the fruit detaches from the plant, as well as traits like vigor, all which impact production.
Images: This event was planned by Steffen Mirsky, UW-Extension Emerging Crops, George Terwey of Minnesota Haskap, Madeline Wimmer, UMN-Extension Fruit Production, Josie Dillon, UW-Extension Fruit Production, Phil Stowe of Walking Plants Orchard, and Ann Kowenstrot, UW-Extension Emerging Crops.
A huge thank-you to participants who came to our first academy, and to our speakers and those who helped plan the event. Events like these support the larger goal to create more resources for growers like you.
Photos by Madeline Wimmer and UMN Communications team.
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