Honey from Hive #2 on top and Hive #1 on bottom. (Sept. 10, 2011.)
The darker honey in the bottom of the jar is from Hive #1 and it has a pleasantly mild flavour. The lighter honey in the top of the jar is from Hive #2 and that honey is sweeter. Hive #2 happens to be the foundationless hive, though I don’t think that has anything to do with the extra sweetness of the honey. The honey will gradually clear as the bubbles rise to the top.
September 13th, 2011: Here’s a short video:
September 21st, 2011 This is what the same jar of honey looks like today, 11 days later:
2 honeys in 1 jar, 11 days after being bottled. (Sept. 21, 2011.)
The lighting conditions are different (artificial light instead of sunlight). The colour of the honey hasn’t changed as drastically as it appears in the photo, but it sure has cleared up.
March 2019 Postscript: I froze this bottle of honey and recently opened it and ate it. The honey was clear and delicious even after five or six years of being frozen. The taste brought me back to my first summer of harvesting honey in St. John’s. Freezing might be the best way to store honey.
Since I’ve been eating honey from our hives every day (for the past 10 days), I want to say just for the record that pasteurized grocery store honey tastes like plastic.
I could notice the difference between grocery store honey and honey from our hives immediately. There’s no contest. But now grocery store honey doesn’t even seem like honey. Not to get all regal on you, but I had a taste of grocery store honey today and nearly made me sick.
We got some good honey going on here.
I believe this is the first jar of honey I bottled from my own bees.
And I still have it.
It’s in my freezer.