Honey 101

[SadieKate]

Sorry!

Truth be told, I dislike clover honey which is the most common. But the eucalyptus, yum.

[zoom-zoom]

Sorry!

Truth be told, I dislike clover honey which is the most common. But the eucalyptus, yum.

I love orange blossom honey, but it's tough to find around here. I like clover, but that eucalyptus sounds heavenly!

[OakLeaf]

Lisa will jump in before long I'm sure...

In the meantime, here's some of the recent discussion.

[tulip]

How do you train bees to only go to clover blossoms, or orange blossoms, or whatever? I mean, they go to whatever flowers are blooming, right? While there might be an orange grove nearby, you can't really claim that it's all orange blossom pollen, can you?

[OakLeaf]

For commercial apiarists, it's not about what's "nearby." Honey is really just a side business for them; most of their money comes from pollination. They take the hives to the pollinating crops, hundreds and sometimes thousands of miles.

Travel stress is one of the many things that's implicated in colony collapse disorder. Beekeepers with just a few stationary hives, such as sell in farmers' markets and local stores, usually differentiate their honeys by season, not by flower.

[Blueberry]

We have some local apiaries that carry their hives to local strawberry or blueberry farms. I would presume that the hives used for pollinating those fields would have "mostly" that pollen. On the other kinds that I've seen (e.g., clover), I have no idea. I've never seen our local folks do it by season.

[SadieKate]

Blueberry, same back in Northern Cal. Hives were placed in fields or orchards so the dominant pollen was identifiable from a single plant. I don't recall ever seeing any identified by season.

[GLC1968]

How do you train bees to only go to clover blossoms, or orange blossoms, or whatever? I mean, they go to whatever flowers are blooming, right? While there might be an orange grove nearby, you can't really claim that it's all orange blossom pollen, can you?

Bees are opportunists - they'll use the pollen from whatever plant is closest to the hive first and only venture futher if they need to. This is why commercial growers can dump hives in the middle of clover fields (very common sight to see around here in the spring) and then call it 'clover' honey. While there may be other types of flowers in the mix, it will be predominantly clover.

For backyard beekeepers who are more interested in using their bees for pollinating gardens and orchards, it's helpful to NOT plant bee-specific flowers in the immediate area of the hives so that the bees get used to traveling futher afield for their pollen. Our bee flowers are planted near the edges of our property and the bees are located directly in the middle of our orchard with the garden between them and the wild flowers, all intentionally.

My guess is that you can probably label honey by the type of flower even if you are not a commercial grower depending on where you live. If you live in an area that really only has clover blooming from x date to x date and you harvest honey before the next main type of crop goes into bloom - then I would think you could safely call it 'clover' honey. I don't know the actual rules about this though.

I should also mention that 'local' honey is different from 'backyard' honey. Local honey can be produced by growers who do transport hives - they just do it locally. Sometimes they contract with berry farms or grass farmers and sometimes the berry farms themselves have bee colonies to move from field to field. Backyard honey comes from hives that don't get moved. These hives would only produce 'clover' honey (for example) if that person's backyard happend to be on the edge of a clover field with nothing else growing nearby. Most backyard producers due use seasons to differentiate their honey. Though, for us, near the mid to end of the summer, the only thing that is still blooming are the blackberries and I suppose that if we were in it for the 'types' of honey, we could make that work. We don't because our abilty to harvest honey is only the secondary reason for having the bees. The bees get first dibs - we only harvest in late spring when the bees need less of it. We'd never pull it out of the hive in the fall.

[BleeckerSt_Girl]

Bees bring in nectar (in their special nectar-storage stomach) and pollen (packed onto their leg 'baskets') based on what is abundantly blooming at a given time within 2-5 mile radius of their hive, regardless of whether their hive stays in one place or gets moved to specific crops or orchards.

You can often tell what kind of honey you are getting in a frame or super based on the color of the pollen packed into the cells at that time. Pollen can be white, yellow, orange, greenish, blue, lavender, red, etc, and it's the clue that tells you if the honey being made that week is mostly from a certain plant, tree, or flower. If there are many things in bloom at a particular time and the pollen is all mixed up, then it's often just called 'wildflower honey'.

[kmehrzad]

My niece who lives in Savannah, GA recently gave me a jar of Tupelo honey. It was the best tasting honey I've ever had, and I've eaten my share of honey throughout the years. You've gotta try it sometime if given the opportunity.

[crazycanuck]

Prior to driving to Melbourne, I remembered that travellers by road can't bring fruit, veggies, seeds, plants etc accross the WA-South Australian border...What I didn't know: honey was included . I bought some local honey in Forrest, Vic hoping to try it when we arrived home. When we pulled up to the stop sign at the WA border inspection & saw honey on the list I thought...poo...I was a honest individual & told the quarantine inspector as I know what how much the fines are

I guess we'll just have to go back to vic & try some local honey. The fig jam made it through though.

[shootingstar]

Prior to driving to Melbourne, I remembered that travellers by road can't bring fruit, veggies, seeds, plants etc accross the WA-South Australian border...What I didn't know: honey was included . I bought some local honey in Forrest, Vic hoping to try it when we arrived home. When we pulled up to the stop sign at the WA border inspection & saw honey on the list I thought...poo...I was a honest individual & told the quarantine inspector as I know what how much the fines are

I guess we'll just have to go back to vic & try some local honey. The fig jam made it through though.

Wow, there are some interesting problems in Aussieland being a big continent out in the middle of the ocean.

I can't imagine..it sounds almost as unusual as trying to restrict maple syrup transport across Canada. Or birch syrup but that's even more expensive.
Again honey is just another of those cultural specific things eaten or produced only in certain regions of the world for retail consumption. Think about it: most traditional East Asian recipes don't use honey.

I didn't develop any honey understanding until I met my dearie.