To my knowledge, all of the basic types of nuts are wind-pollinated and bear catkins -- walnuts, pecans, filberts, hickories. No bee interest at all there to my knowledge.

Almonds are a good nectar source but definitely won't live in Zone 4.

Chestnuts are somewhat attractive to bees, I think -- I have a bunch of them growing, and they have been blooming for the past few years, and I have had bees the past 2 years. You'd think I'd pay more attention to this stuff. I do believe though I have seen bees on the white chestnut blossom spikes.

oaks have a lot of nuts.. shall we presume that you are looking for edible nuts???

you ought to try your local Ag office or forestry .. or soil conservation for suggestions ...

ken

What kind of nuts do you like? In a small space like that, hazelnuts could produce.

Arbor Day is making a big push for hazelnuts.

Dan

Thanks for the info from all of you! I have thought about hazel nuts. I have also thought about butternuts, but have read conflicting information- some sources say that you need 2 or more trees for cross pollination and others have said that they are self fertile. Do any of you have any knowledge on this subject? Thanks again,

Gareth

I think i read somewhere that the black walnut is self- pollinating. These trees produce smaller nuts but there more flavorful.

You could plant 2-3 Corylus americana (American Filbert).

tj

Don't forget Thousand Cankers Disease is on the march and picking up pace. I don't know how the beetles will like zone 4.

Here is a link that might be useful: Thousand Cankers Disease - with map

I wouldn't plant any Juglans myself, for the reason Brandon noted. They are monoecious. For the small amount of space described in my view you want a hazelnut or two.

Dan

I have a black walnut that produced nuts for the first time this year and it was self pollinated, or at least the nearest walnut is 4 miles away. However, they will get pretty big and the nuts are so hard and difficult to get the meats out that they are nice to have but you may not be willing to spend a lot of time getting the nuts out when they start producing. I also found out that sheep do a great job of getting the husks off--they fell off when I wasn't able to check the trees for a couple days, and when I came back and started searching I found the handful of nuts laying under the tree, clean as can be and a few husk portions laying around.

I've also got some american hazels/european hazel crosses that are surviving (they don't get enough water, maybe other things), and they tend to grow as a bush rather than a tree. They haven't produced any nuts yet, but for a small space they would be much better suited than a walnut which can get pretty large.

Oh, no, not ANOTHER exotic, imported deadly tree disease (with an insect to spread it, no less). I lost all of my big ash trees to the emerald ash borer save for one juvenile tree that was able to ride it out until Bayer Advanced Systemic came out. Crikey! Great, I just spend $400 bucks on an electric black walnut cracker, and was planning on getting many years use out of it.

You should be able to use the cracker for alot of years still. The emerald ash borer was different in your case, because it started in that area. So it should take a little time for TCD to come marching northward to your trees. Also, I have read it may not be an exotic imported disease, rather a native one to America, specifically the Western United States. It seems walnuts native to that area have some resistance to it.