‘Home made’ honey

[Paul]

I’ve found someone to help me with the gardening for a couple of hours a week . She also keeps bees, and I bought a jar of honey from her for £6.

It’s indescribably good, but I’ll have a go: it’s rich and flavourful. It’s sweet, but not like sugar. More like syrup or even treacle. It’s a bit spicy in the way that some whisky is spicy. And here’s the strangest bit: there’s a smell/taste which reminds me a bit of dung! And it’s nice!

[Legs]

My father-in-law's honey has a distinct smell and taste of mint, from the lime trees in the Avenues of Hull.  It's amazing stuff.

[ElyDave]

Local honey from one of our market traders is very distinctive. as with Legs, I've tasted minty honey in the past as well

[HeltorChasca]

The mechanic I use makes honey. Elderflower. Amazing. I have also had honey which tastes strongly of Himalayan balsam. Sickly.

In Africa I have had acacia, eucalyptus, jacaranda and mimosa. Bees are awesome.


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[Cudzoziemiec]

Mrs Cudzo's neighbour where she grew up ("neighbour" being separated by a couple of fields and a tiny stream) kept bees and used to pay for things locally in large (kilo?) jars of delicious honey. Best of all, his name was Pszczoła, which means... well, just put it into Google translate! 

[HeltorChasca]

Mrs Cudzo's neighbour where she grew up ("neighbour" being separated by a couple of fields and a tiny stream) kept bees and used to pay for things locally in large (kilo?) jars of delicious honey. Best of all, his name was Pszczoła, which means... well, just put it into Google translate! 

That’s a good story. I met an Indian lady called Melissa whose grandfather kept bees and supplied her in honey, but she had no idea about her name.


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[Cudzoziemiec]

Mrs Cudzo's neighbour where she grew up ("neighbour" being separated by a couple of fields and a tiny stream) kept bees and used to pay for things locally in large (kilo?) jars of delicious honey. Best of all, his name was Pszczoła, which means... well, just put it into Google translate! 

That’s a good story. I met an Indian lady called Melissa whose grandfather kept bees and supplied her in honey, but she had no idea about her name.


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We should have introduced them!

[Wowbagger]

I’ve found someone to help me with the gardening for a couple of hours a week . She also keeps bees, and I bought a jar of honey from her for £6.

It’s indescribably good, but I’ll have a go: it’s rich and flavourful. It’s sweet, but not like sugar. More like syrup or even treacle. It’s a bit spicy in the way that some whisky is spicy. And here’s the strangest bit: there’s a smell/taste which reminds me a bit of dung! And it’s nice!

How dark is your honey? It's possible that it could be honeydew, which is, basically, aphid poo. Very acceptable though.

[Mr Larrington]

ST Coleridge: Iffen I'd known that I'd have had K Khan eating Chicken Nuggets!

[Paul]

I’ve found someone to help me with the gardening for a couple of hours a week . She also keeps bees, and I bought a jar of honey from her for £6.

It’s indescribably good, but I’ll have a go: it’s rich and flavourful. It’s sweet, but not like sugar. More like syrup or even treacle. It’s a bit spicy in the way that some whisky is spicy. And here’s the strangest bit: there’s a smell/taste which reminds me a bit of dung! And it’s nice!

How dark is your honey? It's possible that it could be honeydew, which is, basically, aphid poo. Very acceptable though.

Drat - I had to have a look and then, well, it seemed rude not to try it again. I think I might have developed a honey habit.

It's quite pale. It has this amazing aftertaste. Maybe dung is unfair. Perhaps peat is a better description. Earthy.

[giropaul]

The taste, and to some extent texture, will vary by season, depending what flowers the bees are visiting.

[Paul]

Elaine says that if your honey includes honey from non-eu countries, it's likely to be largely Chinese, where it is sometimes produced by feeding bees with sugar.

[Mr Larrington]

Unless it's the frighteningly expensive stuff from Tasmania.

[HeltorChasca]

A lot of cheap honey has Mexican stock added and the American stuff has foraged on massive almond plantations. Bees foraging on one plant makes for a poor diet as far as bees go which is another reason monoculture is contributing to their demise. (Pesticides aside which are found in almost all honey)


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[Mrs Pingu]

When I'm not able to go to France I get a huge jar of chestnut honey from the Raw Honey Shop. Usually from Spain I think that one, but they do all sorts of varieties.
Not so keen on lavender though.

Mmmm chestnut honey

[Wowbagger]

When I'm not able to go to France I get a huge jar of chestnut honey from the Raw Honey Shop. Usually from Spain I think that one, but they do all sorts of varieties.
Not so keen on lavender though.

Mmmm chestnut honey

I'm assuming horse chestnut honey. I don't know that bees visit sweet chestnuts - I think they may be wind pollinated*.

One of the things we were told several times on beekeeping courses I did was that horse chestnuts, having a very high sugar content to their nectar, are one of the honeybee's favourite flowers. It has been known for apple growers to pay good money to a beekeeper to put some hives in the orchard at blossom time only for the bees to ignore the apple nectar (sugar content about 18%) and harvest the horse chestnuts (sugar content about 70%).

I always thought it a great shame that the conker, beautiful though it is, is food for very few animals.

*Edit: according to this, it's not as simple as that... https://afrenchgarden.wordpress.com/2016/07/08/the-bees-and-sweet-chestnuts/

Wow. That's actually pretty amazing.

[hellymedic]

Wind-pollinated flowers usually lack the features which attract insects so have scant colour and scent.
yacf's beekeepers seem to be quiet...

[quixoticgeek]

Wind-pollinated flowers usually lack the features which attract insects so have scant colour and scent.
yacf's beekeepers seem to be quiet...

You'd expect this thread to get more of a buzz...

J

[Legs]

When we kept bees, most of the forage that they brought back was oilseed rape, which was great for the yield but tends to crystallise in the comb.  We were doing cut-comb honey at the time (it's a bit less messy than extracting), but the honey needed to be eaten quickly unless you liked it to be in bricks.  We've still got some of it in the cellar and it's hard as nails now!

[Cudzoziemiec]

Wind-pollinated flowers usually lack the features which attract insects so have scant colour and scent.
yacf's beekeepers seem to be quiet...

You'd expect this thread to get more of a buzz...

J

It'll hang around a long time and become a sticky.

[leeg]

I've started beekeeping this year and got 12kg from our single hive.  I've signed up to the National Honey Monitoring scheme (https://honey-monitoring.ac.uk/) who carry out a pollen DNA analysis of the honey and send the results back for free.  Downside is that I sent the honey in August and the results are estimated to be available next May.

As we had to transfer the bees from a borrowed Langstroth hive to our National we didn't add a super to collect honey till June so will have missed the spring flowering plants.

[Tigerrr]

When we used to winter in Spain, in the Xalo valley inland there is a honey shop - sells nothing but honey, mostly  from the local area. The amazing thing was the sheer variety of types and tastes. Plus huge price differences! we would buy their 8-jar selection, work our way through and then buy a whopping bucket of the one we liked to take home. Still got some left from 3 years ago!
Mind you I am alway a bit put off by the idea its a sort of insect secretion.