3 gallons from one hive. My second hive swarmed, so not enough honey to harvest yet. The third hive I’m harvesting this week for honeycomb.

  • vikingEnglish
    8·
    2 months ago

    That’s where my question comes from, some flowers (wildflowers, fir trees…) make way darker honey than typical summer flowers for example. Rapeseed flowers produce almost white, very solid honey.

    • VubDapple@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      2 months ago

      Are the different colors striped through the different combs? Or is one full comb dark and the others light?

      • vikingEnglish
        3·
        2 months ago

        I was expecting seasonality actually, since different flowers blossom at different times. So usually you would get one color throughout the blossoming period of that particular plant.

        Bees usually don’t fill all honeycombs at once, but start from one end of the hive and progress to the other side, working on maybe 2-3 at the same time. So if you were to leave them in the hives all through, you’d end up with different shades of honey across several honeycombs. Commercially they would remove them after one variety of flowers is finished and let the bees start over with empty combs, but for private use that is often overkill. So you’d be more likely to find beekeepers who extract them one by one to make sure they are separated. Others don’t mind and just centrifuge them all at once and collect a blend, essentially.