Cabbage Honey

[brecks]

One of my hives has made 50 lbs of OSR honey collected from 1.7km away (the nearest OSR). I have no previous experience of it.
I warmed 20 lbs, found it tasted of cabbage so blended it with wild flower honey to try to improve it. I have added 8 lbs so far and it still tastes of awful.
Could someone please tell me what I have to do to it to make it palatable?

[fatshark]

Doesn't sound like OSR to me. Mine was collected from the field the apiary is in and tastes just like I expect OSR to do … sweet, mild, perhaps a bit bland, fine grain. I suspect yours is not OSR and that they were foraging on something else. However, I'm not sure how to rescue it (other than perhaps use it for mead or cooking with it) and, by the sounds of things, I wouldn't go adding any more wild flower honey to it.

Marmalade perhaps … the fruit taste might well mask the cabbage. If you're selling it advertise it as "Lemon and honey" rather than "Lemon and cabbage", sounds a whole lot more appealing. You can also add a splash of whisky (whiskey for Jon) late on to help with the flavour. I know it's cheating, but the tinned, prepared fruit from Lakeland makes fantastic marmalade when you replace all the sugar/water with honey. The instructions are almost foolproof. Give it a go.

[brecks]

Doesn't sound like OSR to me. Mine was collected from the field the apiary is in and tastes just like I expect OSR to do … sweet, mild, perhaps a bit bland, fine grain. I suspect yours is not OSR and that they were foraging on something else. However, I'm not sure how to rescue it (other than perhaps use it for mead or cooking with it) and, by the sounds of things, I wouldn't go adding any more wild flower honey to it.

Marmalade perhaps … the fruit taste might well mask the cabbage. If you're selling it advertise it as "Lemon and honey" rather than "Lemon and cabbage", sounds a whole lot more appealing. You can also add a splash of whisky (whiskey for Jon) late on to help with the flavour. I know it's cheating, but the tinned, prepared fruit from Lakeland makes fantastic marmalade when you replace all the sugar/water with honey. The instructions are almost foolproof. Give it a go.

It is sweet, mild, bland and fine-grained. All the bees were coming back covered in yellow pollen and it was crystallizing quickly in the comb and went solid in the bucket after extraction, with an off-white scum on the surface. OSR was also the only different flower in the area to previous years.
I have not made mead and do not have the necessary equipment at the moment and think it would take a very long time to use in cooking. I could make marmalade as you suggest, but am not sure where I could get rid of it. Like the Whisky idea though.

Could I perhaps blend it with Ambrosia and feed it back to the bees as winter feed? Or would it set solid again?
Several people told me yesterday evening that they did not like the OSR honey they had tried in the past because of the cabbage taste.

[Little_John]

Could I perhaps blend it with Ambrosia and feed it back to the bees as winter feed? Or would it set solid again?
Several people told me yesterday evening that they did not like the OSR honey they had tried in the past because of the cabbage taste.

I'm not a fan of honey anyway, but I find OSR honey totally unpalatable, so I feed mine back - but only after the robbing season is over, 'cause the bees go crazy for it ...

I find that warming the crystallised honey until it liquifies, then adding about 25% (by volume) of 2:1 sugar syrup, keeps it from re-crystallising for about 4-6 weeks. And even when it does eventually re-crystallise, it then becomes a kind of soft puree with a layer of syrup on top, which I then mix-up, add to home-made icing sugar and make honey-fondant with - which they absolutely adore.

LJ

[Mellifera Crofter]

Do you think all OSR honeys taste the same? Perhaps you should arrange a little OSR taster evening, Brecks. See if you can taste cabbage in somebody else's OSR honey and the other way round.
Kitta

[alancooper]

One of my hives has made 50 lbs of OSR honey collected from 1.7km away (the nearest OSR). I have no previous experience of it.
I warmed 20 lbs, found it tasted of cabbage so blended it with wild flower honey to try to improve it. I have added 8 lbs so far and it still tastes of awful.
Could someone please tell me what I have to do to it to make it palatable?

Well - OSR does belong to the cabbage family (Cruciferae) - so the particular variety growing next to you might be responsible for the taste. My hives, by the way, are in a hedged grassland landscape with no OSR.

[brecks]

Thanks for all replies. I have not decided what to with it yet.