I'm no connoisseur on Honey, guess it's like Tea where some people know the differences and can tell what's what.
I don't buy Honey very often (don't like 'sticky') but after having a tickly cough for a week thought I'd try some straight out the Bottle before bed time (it's worked quite well).
Anyways, I told someone I'd bought some Honey and they asked what type, I said "Co-Ops own Brand, £1.95". She then went into one about it not being right, you get what you pay for, all the flavours from UK to Peruvian etc. etc.
After boring me silly, I did get home and have a think about it.
What are the differences; in taste and in medicinal value?
Richard
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When I was first married OH introduced me to the delights of proper English Honey. Yes there was a difference. It depends on the crops though. The introduction of all those yellow fields of oilseed rape was cursed by beekeepers, not the finest flavour and it tends to crystalise out and make the honey grainy. If you want cheap honey it may have been made by feeding the bees lots of sugar, then collecting the honey they store - instead of letting them go out to all sorts of flowers.
Guess all the more reason to protect our Bees and the wildlife and gardens around them.
I'd really like to start beekeeping, I believe it's the next big thing (for those with larger gardens maybe!). Frugal wise a good product, green, possibly extra income and for those with dosh to spare a good hobby and a sense of being environmentally friendly.
Richard
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Glad the honey helped, Richard It works even better with a splash of lemon and a glug of whisky in hot water Some honeys are definitely tastier - Greek is pricey, but lovely on yoghurt And for allergies it's supposed to be better to use local honey, I believe
Local honey is supposed to help against hayfever, certainly seemed to help with mine years back (although I must say that stopping smoking helped more). I am not really a honey fan, I don’t really like too much sweet stuff, but a good quality single flower honeys do taste different, Acacia is supposed to be nice. As Mo said different flowers give different nectar which in turn give different qualities to the honey.
I tried beekeeping. What I never worked out was how to stop 1 hive needing to increase to a huge apiary. You have to look in the hive at least every 10 days (? if I remember) to make sure they aren't hatching new queens. Queen cells are bigger and given special food so that the eggs develop into big queens not little sterile workers. You can't open the hives in the rain so.... If you miss a queen cell and they 'cap' it the old queen will leave with most of your worker bees in a swarm, and if you can catch them you need another hive to put them in. Or you can make sure they don't get so crowded that they want to divide by taking some frames of workers and eggs and putting them in a new hive. Which ever way, it seems to need an increasing number of hives. And a steady hand to avoid annoying the bees and being badly stung. Hives are fairly pricey and making your own is not a job for a DIY bodger. Measurements have to be exact if you want frames of honey you can extract. If the gaps are the wrong size they build honeycomb all over the place and you can't examine them. Then you need an extractor - or to hire one from the local beekeepers assoc.
An interesting hobby for those who do it right, but not for me.
I love honey on toast for brekkie! The most beneficial honey is manuka honey from new Zealand. The higher the UFM number (above 10 is good) the more potent the honey.
Ive tried manuka honey with a UFM number of 18.
Itll cost you twenty quid a jar though and Dosnt taste as nice as regular honey to me.
My dad was a beekeeper, I have such nostalgic memories of it, the smell of the wax and the smoker, honey jars warming on the aga while we spun the honey from the combs in the extractor, the kitchen being sticky for days afterwards! The honey definitely tasted different according to which flowers dominated that season, sometimes it was very pale with an almost minty tang, other times dark and rich tasting, as Mo said the rape crops caused problems with getting the honey out of the comb, that must be a pain for beekeepers now as there's so much of it about.
"He who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals." --Immanuel Kant
Brianfromdorset wrote:I love honey on toast for brekkie! The most beneficial honey is manuka honey from new Zealand. The higher the UFM number (above 10 is good) the more potent the honey.
Ive tried manuka honey with a UFM number of 18.
Itll cost you twenty quid a jar though and Dosnt taste as nice as regular honey to me.
A few years ago, we were staying with my brother, and as my children like natural yoghurt with honey for breakfast we happily used up the jar of honey in his fridge. Before we went home I popped in to the supermarket down the road to replace the honey, only to find out it cost over £25 for that jar I replaced it with bog standard honey
I'm not really a fan of honey but did have some lavender honey once which was probably the nicest I've ever tried
Lucy x
Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut - Ernest Hemingway
My hubby suffers from hay fever, I was also told that local honey would help. Not sure if it did or not but it tastes nicer than shop bought. He also wants to try his hand at bee keeping, think it may have to wait a few years though, work takes up too much time at the moment.
