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Subject: Orange County, NC Beekeepers

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  • From: Scott Bowers <professionalslug AT gmail.com>
  • To: Peter Smith <psmith AT leaptec.com>
  • Cc: Orange Co Beekeepers <ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [ocba] Update from the Mountains
  • Date: Sat, 27 Aug 2016 09:48:07 -0400

It might be a combination of gum and evergreen. There is a lot of black gum in that area and this is primary trimming time at the Christmas tree farms, which spurs flow from them. Both of those honeys are very light. 

I kept bees in Asheville for seven years and the mountain bees don't harvest rhododendron there, which is good because of its toxicity. In the mid elevations like Asheville you will get locust, poplar, sourwood and wildflower. In the hi-country it's poplar, evergreen, gum and wildflower. 

If there is a severe dearth on everything else, you might rarely get rhododendron. But you'll know it by the belly ache you get from eating it. 

Sent from my iPhone

On Aug 27, 2016, at 9:14 AM, Peter Smith <psmith AT leaptec.com> wrote:

For my first harvest up on Grandfather Mountain, only one of my hives from my initial 3 nucs produced a surplus. My use of a queen excluder resulted in 4 supers of mostly perfect frames, partly because all frames were drawn from scratch and consequently had never been harvested before. Total yield was over 100 pounds.

 

The interesting thing to me was that the nectar collected between early July and mid August produced an extremely light colored honey, much lighter than I had experienced in years of beekeeping in Hillsborough. It almost didn't look like honey at all! It had a unique delicate floral fragrance while extracting and overall lighter taste than normal. We extracted it separately from the honey produced earlier in the season (lower 2 supers)  and so ended up 2 different colors of honey. Could it be the rhododendron bloom which occurs around that time – I’m trying to find out from my local beekeeping group.

 

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Peter Smith

 

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