Idaho Honey Bee

Quality honey is much like wine in that no two are alike; the harvest not only differs from year to year, but also from bee yard to bee yard, and hive to hive.

One of the pleasures of beekeeping is sampling when you open a hive. Often times when you separate the boxes, there is burr comb with honey in the space between boxes, and is exposed. In that case my hive tool dives in, and my veil gets opened up for a taste. You can have several hives in a row and the honey from each of them tastes a bit different than the one next door.

One of the fun parts of beekeeping is to target nectar sources in order to get a particular flavored honey (orange blossom, wildflower, etc).

These are called artisan honeys and they are fun to get. To do best at it, one should move in hives right before the bloom, and extract at the end of that plant’s bloom, before another plant starts blooming heavily. Timing is everything, and the hives should be well established and populous when you do it.

My friend Dick and I scored big with a special honey this year. We found a valley south of us with a heavy population of Lucerne plants with a willing farmer, and brought in hives on a trailer and parked it there for the duration of the bloom. What we got was a dark rich honey with a more complex flavor then most honeys.

This year we are looking for Locust trees to target. It is a very short bloom, but the sweet odor is very intense standing in a grove during the bloom, so we look forward to getting some. If you know of a place close to Boise, let me know, and if we use the location, I will see that you receive a share of it.  

The two jars in the picture are from different floral sources. When I sell honey, it is always fun to give folks a taste and ask which they prefer. People always like one over the other and couples seldom agree.  I often save a sample from each year’s harvest just to compare it with what I get next year.