Just a brief update as we look forward a few months to the honey harvest for the 2016 season. We do plan to harvest a little earlier this year. In 2015, we were spinning honey just after Labor Day. At this point, I am anticipating we will be setup to take pre-orders around August 15 (if not earlier), and should be spinning the honey by the end of August. The exact date won’t be known until we get right up to the day as the whole process of removing the honey supers and spinning the frames is dependent to a certain extent on the weather, plus our work/weekend schedules.

A welcome piece of news that we’ve learned from our 2015 season is that by having a majority of the honey come from the NE Iowa apiary, it does not readily crystallize. In fact, a lot of the honey we are still consuming is in the same liquid form as when we bottled it, and we’ve never had to re-liquefy it like we normally would in past years. I was attributing this to the large basswood bloom in the apiary vicinity from late June to early July, but am not sure. Basswood/linden sourced honey is considered a premiere honey – yay!

Some sites classify basswood honey as slow to crystallize while other say it is medium to fast (3 to 4 months). There may be one or more other nectar sources in the area that contribute to the slower crystallization. Another contributing factor could be the finer filter we started using. “Seed” particulates in the honey are needed to start the crystallization process, but the primary factor influencing the rate of crystallization is the ratio of fructose to glucose in the honey. Honeys that are high in fructose and low in glucose will crystallize much slower. An example of this is white tupelo honey. A fun/odd film that has a backdrop of the tupelo honey business is Ulee’s Gold with Peter Fonda. Now don’t you feel wiser? 🙂

Regardless, last year’s experience is no guarantee of the natural crystallization rate of this year’s honey. We will just have to wait and see. I’m looking forward to it.