The spring bloom is done and the honey has been harvested. Now is the time I visit every hive once again to ready them for the summer lull. As I go about my end of the season beekeeping chores I am buoyed by the words of a friend--even in this my most difficult year of beekeeping. She said she'd been listening to an episode of the Splendid Table by Lynne Rossetto Kasper in which Chef Daniel Klein had visited Kars Turkey to taste its famous honey. He described the taste as "intense" and " a little bit of a tingle on the back of your throat. I don't know if that's because there's a little more pollen in it or what it is, but it has got this natural depth."
This had reminded my friend of me and the taste of my honey! Wow! Others have tried to describe that little "tingle" in my honey to me as well and I know exactly what they're talking about although words escape me. Some have called in a "tang" or, as the Williamsport post mistress tried to describe, a "citrus-y taste." The traditional Kars way of beekeeping is like mine--not to feed the bees sugar water or corn syrup but to sacrifice the harvest if it means leaving enough honey for the bees to survive. So the honey you harvest from the hive is just that--honey! No sugar water or corn syrup gets stored by the bees with the honey.
So as I clean up the equipment from my dead hives, ensure that the surviving hives have enough honey to survive the summer draught--until the fall bloom, which means not harvesting from some hives, I feel good about the way I keep bees. As my mentor not so eloquently taught me: "treat them like ladies and not like whores."