This might not look like much, but it’s delicious. It’s honey that I scraped from a frame about 10 minutes ago. I’m straining it in my kitchen as I write this.
Super sweet citrus-flavours with a slight hit of spice.
I’ve never tasted honey like this before. It definitely has a citrus tang to it, somewhere between lemon and orange, very sweet with a weird spicy aftertaste. My first thought was that I found a single frame of fireweed honey. But this big hit of citrus is unlike any fireweed honey I’ve tasted which had a more subtle fruity flavour and wasn’t overly sweet. The fireweed honey I tasted before was also so translucent that it was nearly the colour of water.
The other thought I had was that it’s a frame of capped sugar syrup from last fall that was spiked with lemongrass oil. But I’m very good at spotting capped sugar syrup because it usually crystallises a bit over the winter and doesn’t have much colour, if any. This stuff looks like pure liquid honey to me.
It’s probably fireweed honey mixed with something else that’s extremely fragrant like goldenrod. I’ll update this post if I get any more info on this.
This is one of the pros of backyard beekeeping. You get to discover different flavours in your honey from individual frames instead of mixing it all together through an extractor like most commercial honeys.
Later that day: I got 500ml (a pint) of honey from the honey frame. It wasn’t the thickest comb. The left over comb was nice and clean:
I’ll post a photo of the jar of honey as soon as the bubbles have cleared from the honey. This might seem silly, but this one of the more enjoyable aspects of beekeeping.
A day later: The bottled honey looks like this:
It’s full of bubbles now, but I’ll take another look at it in a few days once it’s cleared. I’ll put it through my refractometer too, if I can remember how to use it.
June 14th, 2021: The honey has settled in the bottle. All the bubbles are gone.
Now I need to do a test to see if there’s any sugar syrup in it. To be continued…
That flavor is a favorite of my honeys and it seems to be hive dependent. For a particular season, I might only have one hive all in the same proximity that has that taste. I thought maybe it was from my lemon balm, but I’ve gotten that before it’s ever bloomed. Enjoy!
Thanks Don. I should have taken a photo of the frame of honey, because even the comb itself had a certain colour that was a little unusual. If I ever spot it again, I’ll put it aside for safe keeping, that’s for sure.
Most of the honey has already strained through the broken up comb and the honey looks good. Not a dark honey. Almost pure yellow. We’ll have to see how it looks when I put it in a jar.