My own honey!

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My own honey!
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lettucewoman

Joined: 26 Sep 2006
Posts: 7834
Location: Tiptoe in the Forest!!

Posted: Mon May 04, 09 7:08 pm Post subject:
not a bee expert but guessing oil seed rape?

Love2fuss

Joined: 08 Apr 2009
Posts: 16
Location: Hertfordshire

Posted: Mon May 04, 09 7:10 pm Post subject:
Ah. Cheers!

BethinPA

Joined: 28 Oct 2008
Posts: 668
Location: SE Pennsylvania, US of A

Posted: Mon May 04, 09 7:54 pm Post subject:
This is so cool! Will you make biscuits (American-style, with buttermilk) to go with the honey? I'll send a recipe if I get time.

jamanda
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 22 Oct 2006
Posts: 35057
Location: Devon

Posted: Mon May 04, 09 8:03 pm Post subject:

BethinPA wrote:

This is so cool! Will you make biscuits (American-style, with buttermilk) to go with the honey? I'll send a recipe if I get time.

If i get lots I'll be making all sorts! Send the recipe please, but no rush - this was just a little taste what's (hopefully) to come.

lottie

Joined: 11 Aug 2005
Posts: 5059
Location: ceredigion

Posted: Mon May 04, 09 10:42 pm Post subject:

Jamanda wrote:

Love2fuss wrote:

Yum! It must be exciting having your own bees and honey.
What's OSR tho?

Oil seed rape - the bees love it, presumably because a whole field of it is such easy pickings for them, but it makes rubbish, thick, granular honey that is very difficult to extract (apparently)

A bee keeper with taste

I'm glad we have no O.S.R. here.

Mutton

Joined: 09 May 2009
Posts: 1508

Posted: Tue May 12, 09 9:55 pm Post subject:

Depending on how much oil seed rape is in your area you may need to extract the honey in June, immediately the rape stops flowering, as pure rape honey will set in the comb pretty much there and then and you'd have to melt the comb to extract it. Need to keep an eye on your neighbouring fields and what is growing there.

If there is just a bit of rape, and plenty of other things mixed in - gardens, meadow flowers, tree nectar, then you can get away with waiting to extract until August.

We have some buckets of honey from previous place we lived - area with a bit of oil seed rape and lots of other things - fantastic stuff, was extracted in August. The honey went crystalline and set after the first winter in the bucket, has a strong rich flavour and is very popular as a present amongst our friends and relatives. The honey is about 7 years old now and a good vintage

Can't eat supermarket type commercial honey now - can taste the caramellised sugar from the heat extraction. Also I like my honey firm with crunchy bits, not a syrup or a cream.

Pel

Joined: 29 Mar 2008
Posts: 2366
Location: Sennybridge

Posted: Wed May 13, 09 10:15 am Post subject:
Yeah, dad always goes on about when he did his flying flock of 50 hives up to the OSR fields, he had to go everyday and hand extract the honey out of the comb for 3 or so weeks or else it was bloomin difficult to get it out and in some cases had to disgard whole rows of comb if he didnt get up there quick enough. This was just for pure OSR honey (or that was the aim, for the farmers).

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