Spring Honey Taste

bwallace23350 · January 25, 2017, 06:07:31 PM

It appears that at least one of my hives have survived the winter after my first year of bee keeping. Possibly the other hive did survive but I am not so sure. Not as much activity there.

My main question is though is my dislike of clover honey and will my fruit orchard help to distill that taste. Almost all the spring honey around here is clover honey. I am not a big fan of it. It does bloom later than most trees in my orchard and a lot of the wild flowers that I have permanently planted around here. Will they help to offset the taste of clover or will the 30 plus acres of wild clover growing around them just dominate the taste?

splitrock · January 25, 2017, 08:26:29 PM

well if your bees are like mine up here, they will work a lot of others things, but when the clover is blooming, they work that hardest.

I am having a hard time understanding how someone doesn't like clover honey. Unless they are just getting it off of the grocery store shelf.

cao · January 25, 2017, 10:18:24 PM

I have yet to find any honey that my bees made that is not good. Some is better than others. I prefer the spring/early summer better than the fall honey. I honestly couldn't tell clover honey from any other honey. I usually just tell people the timeframe that the bees made the honey and let them figure out what was blooming then. I would suggest that you take some honey at different times of the year. It will suprise you with the difference in taste. If you don't like it you could always feed it back to your hives later.

Acebird · January 26, 2017, 08:24:07 AM

Where and when did you get clover honey that you did not like? I am wondering if it has something to do with rainfall water source?

bwallace23350 · January 26, 2017, 09:07:10 AM

Well I might be making a big assumption about this but it is the local spring honey I am not a big fan of. They call it wildflower but I was told that is it mainly clover. It could have just been a bad year but ever since then I have just bought the fall honey.

Acebird · January 26, 2017, 09:24:01 AM

Local spring honey for us would be maple, fruits, blue berry or dandelion. Clover would be later in the summer.

bwallace23350 · January 26, 2017, 10:13:28 AM

By the summer all our clover is pretty much bloomed out. I wish it stuck around longer as it is a pretty sight.

Hops Brewster · January 26, 2017, 11:44:56 AM

'wildflower' honey will vary by year and time of harvest. Maybe you'll like it this year, maybe not. But I think you won't have any trouble finding someone that does like it!

bwallace23350 · January 26, 2017, 03:06:42 PM

Cool. Well if it is my honey I will probably eat it anyway.

GSF · January 30, 2017, 08:55:59 AM

Hi, my name's GSF, I'm a honeyholic..,

I'm like most others, I've never tasted bad honey. Store bought honey doesn't qualify as honey so it don't count :)

bwallace23350 · January 30, 2017, 09:59:06 AM

I am going to have to go see if I can find some old spring honey laying around now. I know my local suppliers well. They helped me get set up. Perhaps they have an old bottle. I will let everyone know how this goes.

bwallace23350 · February 01, 2017, 05:01:47 PM

Bought some local clover honey today. It is very mild and mellow and I have a taste for strong flavors but it would be nice in addition to sweeting tea or such things.