The USDA classifies honey into seven categories of color. These are named as follows: Water white Extra white White Extra light amber Light amber Amber Dark Amber “White” is one of those odd words. In this case it means “colorless,” in the same way that white vinegar is colorless. White honey is no more white […] Read more
You go to the market and stand before a row of honey jars. They are labeled with words like “clover,” “tupelo,” or “fireweed.” One question immediately comes to mind: “How can you be sure the honey came from just one source?” The truth is that beekeepers can be reasonably sure that most of the honey […] Read more
Cascara (Rhamnus purshiana), a small tree in the buckthorn family, is now in full bloom in western Washington—although you wouldn’t notice if you didn’t look very closely. The small nondescript flowers, growing in the leaf axils, are only about 3-5 mm across with five greenish-yellow petals. These trees grow in moist, acidic soils and tolerate […] Read more
Honeydew is a sweet sticky substance, high in sugars and amino acids, that is excreted by various insects, including aphids, leafhoppers, and some scale insects. These insects puncture the phloem vessels in certain plants in order to eat the sap. But because sap contains low amounts of the compounds necessary to build proteins, the insects […] Read more
Today I harvested my first honey of the season. It turns out that maple honey is a rarity here in western Washington. There are plenty of trees—bigleaf maples, vine maples, Douglas maples—but they bloom early in the spring while the rainy season is still in full swing. So in a normal year I have these […] Read more