I haven’t tasted all the different honeys, but I have tasted several that are prevalent to this area/state (FL.) and some that were fermented. The latter is because the water content was too high and the honey soured. That is what you make meade out of, but that is another story for another time.

The question I get a lot of, besides, “How many time have you been bitten?” is, “Is there a difference in honey tastes?”.

Yes, there is a difference. Let me explain. In the Spring, there is a wide verity of flowers blooming at the same time. This is what we call the Spring major honey flow. Flowers blooming all over the place. Normally each colony will work only one type of flower until it is depleted for about a two - three mile radius around the hive.

We have several hives in an apiary and we don’t know which colony is working what flower. So all the honey we collect is put in the same barrel and we call that Wildflower. It is a mixture of all the different honeys. It has a strong, mildly pungent taste and is of a dark amber color. I use this honey for cooking, using it in my cereal, sweetening tea and coffee, and sometimes, I drip some on my ice cream the same way I use chocolate and strawberry toppings. It just gives the ice cream a different taste.

Gallberry is a bush that is kin to the Holly family. The honey is a milder taste and is lighter in color than the Wildflower honey. I use it for table honey, you know, biscuits and butter, toast, grits (I like mine with sweetener and milk), and I like the taste of honey on my sausage. I also use this honey to glaze my meats while cooking.

And last but not least, Tupelo. This is a tree that grows in the swamp area in North Florida. This honey is much lighter than the other two honeys that I have talked about. It is a very light amber, but not water clear as some of the clovers, and has a velvety taste that does not linger as an aftertaste that some of the other honeys do. This is strictly a table honey. It costs too much to cook with.

These are the only honeys I deal with at the present time. I have worked Privet, Orange Blossom, and Palmetto. There are hundreds more types of honey that I don’t know, such as Cactus, Sourwood, Basswood, Clover, Alfalfa, Sunflower, and the legumes.

To keep the honeys separated, I have to take the honey off the bees and move the hives to the target plant and put clean honey supers on at the beginning of the flow. Then, just as the target flow is diminishing, I take that honey off and mark it, move the hives to the next target flower, and put clean honey supers on. This way each type of honey is separated to keep it from becoming mixed. When extracting, all the equipment must be cleaned between each type of honey. This is why the specialty honeys are more expensive than the wildflower. More work is involved to keep them separated.

Now is the time to start planning for the next year. Do I want to expand my apiary. If so by how big? Do I have enough equipment? Do I need to replace any equipment and am I going to repaint this year? These are question that must be dealt with and plans made to implement them.