Honey

[Nicos]

OK- still waiting for a bee section- so I'll ask it here.....

I'm looking for a specific type of honey....and then having Googled a fair few places I noticed that several beekeepers offer different types of honey.

Can you beekeepers please explain how if you have several hives- and say 'this honey is from wildflowers' 'this honey is from Borage' 'this honey is from heather' etc etc.....

Do you actually have to follow the bees?- or is it a percentage of pollen from one particular site????
signed...'utterly confused from Normandy'

[CaroltheCarrot]

Em I will attempt to answer, wheres Mrs Dobbie or Headfry when you need them.
The honey is flavoured/coloured by the pollen that the bees collect, there is an identification chart as the pollen is all different colours.
usually honey in this country is just wildflower honey but some beekeepers up here take their bees to the heather.
A honey bee can travel up to 3 miles for pollen so you can never be 100% sure what type of honey you are going to get.
i actually sound like I know what I am talking about!!!
Mrs d and HF will put me right

[Mrs Dobby]

Lol, unless you have your hives situated in an area that has nothing but the type of forage that you are looking for, then there is no way you can categorically state that the honey is made from nectar from a specific flower, but as most of the major pollen / nectar flows are at different times of year AND the pollen that they are bringing in is readly identifiable (by using a colour chart and cross referencing with whats in flower at the time locally), so its fairly easy to be able to identify the major component of the honey that is being brought in at any time.

However, unless you are regularly looking in the hives and noting what has been recently filled (which isnt always immediatley capped as the bees have to reduce the moisture content for storage - to prevent it from fermenting), you cant state for sure that it is ALL from that source (especially as many of the foragers may be bringing in other forms of nectar and pollen from other less common plants).

Generally you can also tell from the colour and consistency of the honey what its main nectar ingredient was, Rape seed sets solid very quickly, and is light in colour, Himalayan Balsam is champagne coloured honey, and exceptionally clear with a delicate champagne taste!

Heather honey is usually got by taking your hives ot the heather when it starts to bloom, its a lot of work, but does man with the single type of plant flowering that you can be fairly certain that its almost all heather honey, which has a distinct taste of its own. Personally we dont take our bees to the heather, it adds stress to the colony and would cost a fair bit in travel time and petrol, plus with harvesting almost 500lb last year from 3 estavlished and 3 new hives, we had no need to!

Hope this helps, and please feel free to ask as many questions as you like!

PS Nicos, we can always supply you with some honey when you are next over here, you could always come for a look in the apiary if you like, we have got some spare bee suits!

[Mrs Dobby]

Em I will attempt to answer, wheres Mrs Dobbie or Headfry when you need them.
The honey is flavoured/coloured by the pollen that the bees collect, there is an identification chart as the pollen is all different colours.
usually honey in this country is just wildflower honey but some beekeepers up here take their bees to the heather.
A honey bee can travel up to 3 miles for pollen so you can never be 100% sure what type of honey you are going to get.
i actually sound like I know what I am talking about!!!
Mrs d and HF will put me right

Spot on info Carol, no need to put you right at all!

[Nicos]

PS Nicos, we can always supply you with some honey when you are next over here, you could always come for a look in the apiary if you like, we have got some spare bee suits!

That's a really kind offer.....we'd love to take you up on it sometime- thanks!!!!!

...and thank you both for the info

[Storm]

I have seen bee hives in fields of sunflowers and borage and amid groves of lime trees and while there is always the possibility that some pollen and nectar is from other sources, I would speculate that most of it will come from the main monocrop that the bees are among.

As Mrs Dobby points out, when your bees are near a rape field you're not going to find honey from anything else in your supers!

[Storm]

OK- still waiting for a bee section- so I'll ask it here.....

Ditto!!!

[Headfry]

I am not sure that you can ever say - your honey is from a particular flower only. Impossible to judge.
But, you could say its mostly, fruit blossom or rape blossom it that dominates the area close to your hives.

[Nicos]

Actually I find this very interesting.....

My OH would like bees- a project for next year maybe?????

I'm looking out of the window and we have about 20 massive pear trees and a couple of large cherry trees in full blossom.
When they have finished flowering there will be chestnut and fir trees. We're surrounded by woods and grazing.
So by saying you can tell by the colour of the honey where the pollen is from, are you saying that some of the combs will be fruit blossom ( and therefore presumably really yummy) and some of the other combs will be chestnut/fir tree.OR- will thy be a mixture??
( I have some bought chestnut honey which is just for cooking cos it's v bitter and I don't fancy 40 pots of bitter cooking honey from our bees)
Can you tell I'm a tad confused???!

[chris]

Mrs D - when you bottle the honey do you steralise the jars ala jam? Or is it ok in any old vessel? always wondered that.. does it naturally keep? How long does it keep?

[Headfry]

oh another bee keeper .....yay - lets hope so Nicos!

It can be just individual cells within a frame that are from different sources thus different 'flavours' The bees will fill the frame in a pattern, however nature is nature and has its random moments. My girls have a 'thing' for random.... of course when you extract it - it gets completely mixed up in the process.
My very fave honey is when the bees have worked broad beans - yummy
Lucerne makes for fantastic delicate honey that sets only after a long time and sets beautifully too. A pleasure to work with when it comes to extracting it!!

[Mrs Dobby]

Lol Nicos, I hope you and OH take the plunge, its both fascinating and rewarding looking after bees (and not just in terms of the honey harvest!)

Usually the nectar thats bropught in ends up mixed up with anything else thats being brought in, although if there's a predominance of one type of nectar flow, then you will get a higher proportion of that in the blend. However, when it comes to extraction, you extract it frame by frame, usually a super at a time, so all the honey in that super will be mixed together, so unlikely that you would get more than the occassional batch that was specifically of any really strongly identifiable type or taste, so Id not worry too much about the different trees, you'd need to be situated inside a chetnut orchard with nothing but chestnuts around you for 3 miles to ensure that it was just chestnut nectar and pollen in the blend.

Hi ChrisM

The honey is naturally antiseptic - once the bees have reduced the moisture cntent and capped it off in the frames, as a precaution we do sterilize any jars we use by heating, but the buckets and settling tanks are merely washed in very hot soapy water and dried before use, sometimes the honey can sit in these for months at a time, with no ill effect - apart from perhaps a bit of granulation.

HTH

[chris]

Just wondered, thanks