What makes our honey
Honey is a record of what was in bloom within about two miles of the hives, in the weeks the supers were on. Ours is not one flower. It is whatever this corner of North Florida was flowering that spring — which is why the jars are not identical, and why we can tell you what is actually in them.
Four kinds of country, all within range
The hives sit where several different landscapes run together: the Red Hills uplands, pine flatwoods, open pasture and field edge, and the swamp along the Aucilla River. A colony forages a couple of miles in every direction, so it works all of it in the same week. Very little of that is planted for bees. It is simply what grows here.
The river bottom is the part that sets this honey apart from an upland yard. Black gum, swamp tupelo, willow and smartweed grow down there and nowhere else nearby.
The spring flow — the honey you actually buy
Nearly all of our surplus comes off between about the first of April and the middle of June. These are the plants carrying it, roughly in the order they open. Dates shift a week or two either way with the weather.
- Blackberry and dewberry — mid March into late April. Pasture edges and clearcuts, and the first dependable nectar of the year.
- White clover — late March into late May. Pastures, and generous when the spring is wet.
- Tulip poplar — early April into early May. Hardwood ravines in the Red Hills. Dark and strong on its own, and it deepens the color of anything it lands in.
- Black gum and swamp tupelo — through April, in the river swamp. A narrow window, and some years it barely registers.
- Gallberry — late April into early June. The classic North Florida honey plant, out of the flatwoods, and the one most responsible for a light, mild jar.
- Saw palmetto — mid May into mid June. Scattered through the flatwoods, and heavy with nectar where it grows.
Holly, privet, persimmon and a long list of smaller things bloom alongside these. We do not pretend to account for every flower a bee visits. What we can say is that nothing was trucked in, nothing was fed to make a crop, and the mix above is the honest shape of it.
On the word "tupelo." The famous tupelo honey is Ogeechee tupelo, and it comes from a few river systems further west. What grows in our swamp is mostly swamp tupelo and black gum. They are relatives, they contribute to the spring flow, and we are glad to have them — but we are not going to sell you tupelo honey, because that is not what this is.
Why a jar from June tastes different to one from April
Because the flowers changed and we did not blend the difference out. A jar pulled early leans on blackberry, clover and poplar. Later in the flow, gallberry and palmetto dominate and the honey runs lighter and milder. Pooling a whole season together would average all of that into one consistent amber, which is exactly what the big packers do and exactly what we are not doing.
The summer gap
From late June until nearly September the heat and the rain shut nectar down. Almost nothing yields, colonies live on what they have, and there is no honey to take. This is the main reason we are not a year-round faucet: the crop happens in a window, and when it is gone it is gone until next spring.
Fall belongs to the bees
Goldenrod comes in around the middle of September and asters follow it, and together they are the second real flow of the year. We leave it. Two reasons, and the second is the honest one:
- Goldenrod honey granulates hard in the comb, quickly. It is difficult to extract cleanly and it is not what most people expect in a jar.
- The colony needs it. A hive here should go into winter carrying forty to fifty pounds of stores. Taking the fall flow means feeding sugar back in the spring, and we would rather leave the honey.
So what you buy from us is the spring crop. The fall crop stays on the hive.
Then it starts again
Red maple opens in the last stretch of January and is the first pollen of the year. Nothing about it makes surplus honey, but it is the signal the queen has been waiting for, and everything above follows from it.