Limeflower honey
It has not been a good year for honey so far. But, we had several capped frames of honeycomb in a super on Queen Opuntia’s hive by mid-July, which we extracted to fill a handful of jars of cut comb in honey, and about a dozen more of liquid honey alone. It’s a light, runny honey, with a “minty” (not exactly, but reminiscent) taste that kicks in after a couple of seconds. Apparently this mintyness is indicative of limeflower content, which would match with the time of year and the existence of several flowering lime trees in the village, so that’s probably what it is.
Queen Hope’s hive had a super that was being filled, but it stopped being filled. And several weeks later, the honey situation is in reverse, with nearly all the hives having lower honey stores than they did. There must be insufficient forage around if they are having to eat their stored honey. The main “crop” flowering now seems to be Himalayan balsam, along the river a few hundred metres from here. Fortunately, Queen Opuntia’s colony seems to be doing better than the others, alleviating any guilt that I might otherwise have felt about taking off that super.
