Welcome Neil and thank you for the great pictures.

It is a sad fact that commercial honey is diluted with sugar syrup in order to have more to sell.
We don't pull any honey off when we are feeding the bees sguar syrup here and for sure don't dilute it with syrup when we do pull it off. Why ruin a wonderful tasting honey like that?

A friend was telling us that the local Farmers Market banned a vendor for selling honey fromm another state becaues their adverisement states everything sold there is Locally Produced. Many peole here buy local honey to help with their allergies and were most upset when they found out the honey they bought was from somewhere else.

Thank you Neil! That is very interesting. I like the view through the glass.

I never thought of honey having sugar in it. I hope we have the same here!

Dear all, it was actually King Henry VIII in the early 1500s who made it illegal to put sugar in honey! Honey was used and still is for the production of mead, which is an alcoholic drink made by monks! King Henry VIII noticed that someone had put sugar (sugar beet), but not cane sugar as we did not have then in the honey! So he had someone find the culprit and had him boiled alive in Smithfield meat market! It is still English law today, and has never been repealed.
Of course we are very proud of our honey, and Catford honey from London has won countless awards. The bees are hived on an old bombsite, as London was flattened by the Germans in the second world war! Under our law if nobody can prove ownership of the land and you live on it with proof for 10 years, it is yours! This he did and now owns the site with his bees! Because I am a trained Horticulturist I helped him put an amazing wildflower collection on this site.
The problem he has and so many of the honey producers have is that this so called "Runny Honey" that is imported from abroad as children like it, is up to 80% sugar! That is why children like it so much!
There lies the problem as this stuff is cheap and has children bouncing off the walls, due to the high sugar content!
My father is diabetic and he can have a slight amount of proper honey. But unless you know a really great supplier it can be dangerous for diabetics.
From Hampton Court Palace One of King Henry VIIIs Palaces!
Kindest Regards from England.
Neil.
The front of the Palace!

The rear from the north long water.

Neil I really enjoyed reading the history of honey you shared with us. When I was looking for books on honey plants I discovered almost all of them are written in your country. You all have a long, rich history of beekeeping.

Dear Margaret, I did not mean to invade your forum! Honey has always fascinated me along with cooking and gardening. There is even a beer called 'Waggledance' with honey in it, and it is fantastic. Nearly every monastery had hives, although Henry VIII destroyed a lot of monasteries. Lindisfarne the Holy island makes the best mead and to read about it see here http://www.lindisfarne-mead.co...
We do have a medieval church that dates to just after 1100 AD and that still has hives in the vicarage grounds. In the Chelsea physic garden in London they have lots hives, although the honey is not the best to me.
Heather honey is my favourite as it is strong, and fantastic in cooking. Plus to get rid of colds with a "Hot Toddy,' which is whisky, honey and lemonade all heated up and drunk!
I just hope that people do not spoil your honey as they are trying to ours. For as you say our history on beekeeping and honey is very rich.
Great forum, keep up the good work!
Kindest Regards from England.
Neil.
p.s.
Bees heaven?

Neil, I am quite happy you invaded my forum with all your interesting tidbits of history concerning honey and beekeeping in England. I am learning from you and you are verifying some of the information I've read about beekeeping in England. Please continue your invasion of my forum whenever you wish.

Honey sold in the stores here also has sugar in it. Surprisingly, even children will refuse to eat that honey once they taste the real stuff. I have a young lady I give samples of our honeys to for her birthday each year who would not eat the store honey. She swears each new flavor is the best ever. Most adults do not want to pay the price for the good stuff but once they try it they will usually pay for it. So maybe your beekeepers just need to get them hooked on the real honey to make a change.

One of our customers educated his office staff on honey when he first bought from us. He told them you can tell you are getting real honey by how thick it is and how slow it moves when you tilt the jar. He also told us that all the other honey he had bought from others required him to take a tablespoon of it for his allergies whereas with ours he's learnt he only needs a little of it to get the same result.

I sincerely hope England can recover from the imported honey mess.

Dear Margaret, I totally agree with you. The problem lies in where do they get the real stuff as the stores (supermarkets), refuse to sell it. There are only a couple of the chain (big) supermarkets that do, and the price is sky high.
The stores do this on purpose and it is well known they do! Parents who are finding times hard cannot afford store prices of £6.50 per jar, when "Runny Honey" is only 99p. 99p is not even a pound.
Most of the Kent honey is sold from the beekeepers who put signs out in the little country lanes with "Honey For Sale." It is a very good price as there is no middleman and no stores making a huge profit.
The few chain stores that do sell it insist on a sell by date stamped on the label. When they were informed that they found honey in the pyramids that was still perfectly edible, they have shut up about this one!
Honey was used in the first world war as a wound dressing as it is a natural antiseptic, amongst many other fine qualities!
The most famous drink we have in the UK is Drambuie from the isle of Skye off Scotland. This whisky liqueur has been made for centuries with honey, and is gorgeous!
Kindest Regards from England.
Neil.

Neil I feel like I"m getting a tour of the UK through your words.

Honey was used for wounds during wars long before the first World War. Some hospitals are still using it especially for burn victims.

Price is a factor here as well but the Runny Honey in stores isn't much cheaper than the real stuff sold by some beekeerpers directly and in some cases it's higher. Most people look at honey as just a sweetener but the real stuff is so much more than that so it is well worth the price.

Around my area hobbyist beekeepers are becoming popular, especially since it's getting legal to keep bees in the city. Folks sell it at farmers markets and some put out signs out at the curb. It sells very well. Many people like the idea of eating local raw honey. My cupboard is full of honey purchased from local bee keepers, although that might change now that a bee keeper is keeping 6 hives in my yard in exchange for some honey. I may get all the honey I need from him and then some.

I love mead and have tried to talk my wine making spouse into making it, but instead he makes cyser with all the apples we grow and local honey. I can't complain since it's good. We're about to harvest our white seedless grapes and make wine with honey instead of sugar.

I like Drambuie, but I didn't know it had honey in it.

Also, I remember getting scotch, honey and lemonade, heated up when I had a bad cough. My parents came from England so maybe that's why.

Dear Margaret, honey has many uses as we know and medical use was and still is one of them! During the Crimean war 1870s the soldiers had to get their own honey! During the first world war for the first time it was issued to the Army in tins with the famous arrow on and the words "Honey For The Use Of." The soldiers were issued a tot of Rum in the morning and on a night, this Rum was said to be not the best so they would sweeten it with the honey, and add it to their mugs of tea! This is still called "Gunfire" in the British Army to this day, although whisky was also used and still is today on Regimental celebrations/occasions!
Tabby, my wife loves mead and Drambuie, although mead is a lot cheaper than Drambuie of course. Mead is normally made by fermenting a solution of honey with water, but sometimes it is made with grain mash. Other types are indeed made from fruit and rice! Most mead in the UK is honey and water and can get up to 18% vol alcohol.
Regards.
Neil.
p.s. See this for a typical mead recipe! http://www.wyrdwords.vispa.com...

Neil I always wondered how they kept the soldiers from eating all the honey while on duty. I had thought it was rationed to them. it is so interesting to get an inside view of the Army's use of honey.

Tabby you are going to think the honey from your property is the best ever. How are the bees doing now?

Margaret,
One of the large hives has been wash boarding for three days now. We went out at 9 last night and they were still doing it. I got a video of it that I need to off load from the camera.

Because we are in a drought and the hives were all new this year from swarms and cutouts, the beekeeper has us feeding the bees sugar water. But there is also a lot of in/out activity with lots of pollen being brought in. I wonder what has red pollen? I know there are some blooming alfalfa fields nearby but I don't think they have red pollen.

Bees sure do like the pollen on my corn!

Tabby you would have to take a look at what's blooming in your area before I can figure out what might have red pollen. Buckeye, Peach and Snowdrops have red pollen but they bloom in spring.

When the bees quit taking the sugar water they have found enough nectar to support them.
Sunflowers are a favorite pollen plant here.

Sunflowers are popular with the honey bees and native bees here too. Fortunately they all seem to get along.
Here's a good example.

Nice photo Tabby. Here the honey bees went first then a few days later we had bumble bees but not both at the same time.

Dear Margaret, I did track some Waggle dance Honey beer for you to see! It is very popular here, but is almost always sold out unless you get there early!
Regards
Neil.

Then of course for the tasting.

p.s. Quite beautiful!

Neil that beer looks like honey. Does it make one do a waggle dance after drinking it?

I've never seen mead or honey beer sold around here. Though I don't go in any liquor shops so that could be why.

There was one honey beer we found locally but unfortunately it was terrible.

We have several local meaderies around here so not only can we get local honey, we can get local mead.

Hive six is still doing washboarding. I sure wish I knew what it meant.

Tabby are they hanging on the outside of the hive? I'm not familiar with the term washboarding in relation to honey bees.

If they are hanging around outside the hive and it's hot out it means they are keeping cool like some people sit on their porches during the evening. It's called bearding when they do that and there's a picture of it in the bee photos thread.

http://garden.org/thread/view_...

In our history due to the population, water was not safe to drink from certain rivers. The only safe way of drinking anything was to boil the water, and that was how beer was developed and became our nations favourite drink.
Now of course the rivers are clean and safe, but beer is still a favourite. At for instance St, Cross in Winchester which used to be the capital of England, they used to brew beer in 1084 AD. Of course no cane sugar was heard of then, so it was brewed with honey. As our beer is made from hops not chemicals like lager beer, you needed something to react with the yeast. Hops do not ferment as they are dried, or rot down like fruit which makes it own yeast if left long enough.
Hops are very bitter and that is why even to this day we ask for a pint of bitter! The honey in the old days did sweeten it slightly, but not much, so the result was a bitter beer, unlike lager.
Tabby I found this for you, so I hope it is of some help!
‘washboarding’ every afternoon on the front of the hive. It’s a distinctively mesmerizing behavior, and what’s especially remarkable about it is that no one knows what function washboarding serves. Honey bees are perhaps the most-studied insect of all time, and yet there is still a great deal to learn even about common bee behaviors.
Regards.
Neil.