A couple weeks ago, we harvested the first honey of the 2011 season, our “Spring Flower” variety. To determine what kind of honey we had, we took into account the color, flavor and known nectar sources within a two mile radius, which is the furthest bees will travel to find honey-making supplies. We also noted what nectar was available at the time it was produced – nectar is the sugar source for honey. The earliest nectar available to bees is from blooming maple trees in the early spring, but it’s usually too cold for bees to fly at that point. So the first collectable nectar source for most bees is dandelions, and this was the main source for our spring flower honey. Try not to let your hatred of lawn-dotting dandelions bias you against our honey – celebrate the fact that dandelions finally have a positive purpose in life!After the dandelions are tapped out, there’s usually a lull in available nectar. This is about the time of the year that they start thinking about swarming. We can’t really blame them – if you suddenly cut off our food supply, we’d probably get ticked and leave, too. Right now we’re in the thick of the main nectar flow, which typically runs from early July to mid-August. During the prime season, it’s not uncommon for a strong colony to collect up to 30 pounds of honey each week - almost 4 gallons! Our seven new hives aren’t producing quite this much because new colonies have to use their first nectar and honey to produce the wax to make their honeycomb. The bees in our two older hives can recycle last year’s comb – very eco-chic of them.
We are eagerly awaiting our first taste of the mid-summer honey to find out what kind we’ve got. Last year’s variety had what we delicately referred to as a “polarizing taste.” Some less charitable tasters called it “reminiscent of dirty socks.” It was a distinctly strong flavor that we couldn’t identify, and we had to reach out to one of our local honey experts to help us identify it. Turns out we had buckwheat honey, which is highly prized by some (soiled laundry aftertaste notwithstanding) for its higher antioxidant content. We still don’t know who within a 2 mile radius was growing the buckwheat our bees found, so we don’t know if we’ll end up with buckwheat honey again this year or not. Hives are like a box of chocolates – you never know what you’re going to get!
