There was some dark honey being produced near the Tay a few seasons back. Japanese knotweed was the prime suspect...which is a major honey source now in some parts of North America.
Printable View
There was some dark honey being produced near the Tay a few seasons back. Japanese knotweed was the prime suspect...which is a major honey source now in some parts of North America.
Japanese knotweed has invaded some of the tributaries of the Spey now C4U including the Knockando burn next to me. Hopefully they’ll eradicate it before it becomes a problem
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Be very wary of it esp the sap is it is highly caustic and burns badly.
PH
Sycamore honey is dark with a nice nutty flavour. It is in flower at the same time as hawthorn and I suspect that the majority of 'hawthorn' honey is actually from sycamore. My bees love hawthorn but only ever seem to collect pollen from it.
2 years ago we had the most amazing hawthorn blossom that the bees went mad for. The extracted honey was superb almost had a nutty aftertaste. I checked the pollen in the honey and was around 50% Hawthorn. Not that dark as I recall.
It was a rare year when everything came right together.
Most years around me it blooms and I find some pollen in the honey but not a lot.
Hawthorn does well on the west coast of Wales where I keep bees in years where the delicate first blossom doesn't get rattled off the boughs by gales. My experience is that the hawthorn honey is darker than sycamore, not a very scientific observation just that it's always a bit of a mix and in years when the sycamore is dripping the honey is lighter in colour and flavour and in years when the hawthorn scent is almost overpowering and the honey tastes the same as the scent then it's slightly darker.
When I have a minute (currently have family staying) I will look Wedmore up on this one.
PH