Intheswamp
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Member since September 2015
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Post by Intheswamp on Oct 8, 2015 11:44:41 GMT -5
Ok, I originally wasn't thinking correctly when I asked to confirm the amount of sugar. My second response regarding the amount of sugar he was using was pretty much correct...2 to 3 cups of sugar *is* equal to 1 to 1-1/2 pounds. I keep a few hives of honey bees and in hard times we supplement their feed with sugar...normally in spring we use a 1:1 ratio of sugar to water to feed them (simulates thin nectar)...in the fall we feed anywhere from 1:2 to 3:5 which is closer to honey consistency so they don't have to work so hard storing it up for the winter. The old saying for figuring out how much sugar to add in the ratios is "A pint's a pound the world around.". Basically a pint of sugar weighs very close to a pound...as does a pint of water...so we can use either weight or volume. So, now you know how to feed honey bees. Btw, we never feed during a honey flow as that would ruin the honey. Also, beware of store bought honey as shipping containers full of Chinese honey find there way into the country...they super/micro-filter the pollen out to remove the fingerprint of plant pollen so it's origin can't be traced...it has little semblance of honey. The US banned Chinese honey imports but they simply shipped through another country (Vietnam mostly) and still got it into the country. We are talking of hundreds and thousands of containers of honey. Wow, I took a tangent on that, didn't I? Understand Jim?....sure!!! He was talking about using one or two soup cans of some dried out cane squeezings per six pounds of rock...you weren't talking about beet squeezing's were you Jim? ...don't nobody around here grow beets...you know, those round red things we used to always scrape off our plates into the garbage cans in the lunchroom at school.
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jamesp
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Member since October 2012
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Post by jamesp on Oct 8, 2015 14:09:42 GMT -5
yes Ed, I understand. yes yes yes. We can't help these things, we're just good ole southern boys. what looks crude can be very deceiving. and long tangents have great meanings
By the way, my friend Virgil, one of your fellow bee keepers, says a man trained can taste honey and know what type of flowers produced it within reason. As long as it is not some foreign flower... is he feedin me a line ?
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Post by rockpickerforever on Oct 8, 2015 15:08:23 GMT -5
By the way, my friend Virgil, one of your fellow bee keepers, says a man trained can taste honey and know what type of flowers produced it within reason. As long as it is not some foreign flower... is he feedin me a line ? James, didn't you say Virgil is your "honey buddy?" That tickled me when I read it! (smirking now, lol!)
I know it is possible to distinguish which flowers different honeys come from. Like Ed said, they can identify the pollens in them, if they aren't filtered out. Imagine a trained palate could tell ID them. There's someone at the swap meet that sells their homegrown honey, about a dozen different varieties. Dang, now I got a hankerin' for something sweet... Maybe some of the jalapeno jelly would hit the spot? Yum! Then back outside to finish the yard work.
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jamesp
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Member since October 2012
Posts: 36,159
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Post by jamesp on Oct 8, 2015 17:13:11 GMT -5
Full fill yourself Jean. I squeeze honey out of honey dew melons. They dew make good honey.
Chinese privet makes clear honey. It is a nuisance intro that takes over river bottoms. Ed - privet honey ?
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Intheswamp
Cave Dweller
Member since September 2015
Posts: 1,910
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Post by Intheswamp on Oct 8, 2015 17:37:04 GMT -5
Someone that as been around honey for years, has a keen sense of taste/smell, and is somewhat perceptive....sure, they could do pretty good differentiating between nectar sources in the honey. Also, by the color of the honey sometimes. My mentor is in his mid-80's as is his best friend. The friend slung some honey last year out of a mere 7 or 8 frames that had a distinctive dewberry taste to it...delicious. I'm not that educated on honey varieties, but even I could taste the dewberry in that honey...apparently the bees got on a good nectar source and stayed with it for quiet a while. Normally they will do that, stay on one nectar or pollen source...but having those few frames all grouped together in a multistory hive was very interesting...and tasty!
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Post by rockpickerforever on Oct 9, 2015 15:47:14 GMT -5
Full fill yourself Jean. I squeeze honey out of honey dew melons. They dew make good honey. Chinese privet makes clear honey. It is a nuisance intro that takes over river bottoms. Ed - privet honey ? Thank you, I did! Well, more like a "taste" than a "fill" lol.
Squeeze honey out of a honey dew melon? Okaaaaaay... Honey from the pollen in the flowers, maybe.
We all know honeydew is 1. A list (ya know, a honeydew list? Most of the weaker sex (men) that are married know about this. And 2. A Tasty melon that you eat, sorta like cantaloupe. Now that there word has a total nother mean, too, such as "We cantaloupe 'cause we ain't got no money to go Vegas!"
Har, har...
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Intheswamp
Cave Dweller
Member since September 2015
Posts: 1,910
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Post by Intheswamp on Oct 9, 2015 17:27:11 GMT -5
Privet hedge...some of the finest light colored honey you can get. My wife loves it. It is *very* good. Personally, though, I like a darker more robust flavored honey...medley of clovers, tulip poplar and fruit trees and whatnots.
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jamesp
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Post by jamesp on Oct 10, 2015 3:14:45 GMT -5
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jamesp
Cave Dweller
Member since October 2012
Posts: 36,159
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Post by jamesp on Oct 10, 2015 4:03:40 GMT -5
Privet hedge...some of the finest light colored honey you can get. My wife loves it. It is *very* good. Personally, though, I like a darker more robust flavored honey...medley of clovers, tulip poplar and fruit trees and whatnots. The whole Chattahoochee River basin covered with privet Ed. Creeks too. Lots of privet here. Ogeechee tupelo honey. Yum. Lots of that in south Georgia. That and orange blossom killer honey. Our dark honey comes from poplar and sour wood trees. Lots of them close.
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Intheswamp
Cave Dweller
Member since September 2015
Posts: 1,910
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Post by Intheswamp on Oct 10, 2015 6:48:19 GMT -5
Oh, there's plenty of privet over in the south central part of Alabama, too,...trust me. It runs just behind kudzu in taking over ground, especially freshly skint up ground. One medium size bush makes, what, 500,000,000,000,000 seeds? It's only redeeming value is that it makes fine honey. My father would have surprised to find out that privet had any value at all, he despised it. Personally, I don't like it (invasive privet) *but* the bees really do. Tupelo honey...overrated in my opinion. What I've had (and I've only had a few varieties of it wasn't that fantastic to me, I'd rather have some good wildflower honey...maybe I've just had some sub-par sub-varieties of it. But, there are folks that think it's the cats meow, though. I guess if we all liked the same things it would get a bit monotonous, eh? There's a movie with tupelo honey as a key element in it..."Ulee's Gold". A fair movie, Peter Fonda is the main character, for what that's worth. One interesting trait of tupelo honey is that it will not crystalize in storage which is often touted as a selling point...but, counterfeit honey and heat processed honey won't crystallize, either, due to the "refining".
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ChrisO
off to a rocking start
My first groove wrap on a Charlevoix stone I polished!
Member since July 2015
Posts: 7
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Post by ChrisO on Oct 12, 2015 23:10:35 GMT -5
Just emptied the tumblers and rinsed off the final polish grit. So disappointed. Dull, with lots of grit stuck in tiny holes and cracks. They were so beautiful after the pre-polish! Ugh.
I'm tumbling them again for no more than 24 hours using plastic beads and windex. The windex seemed to work best with my cleaning brush, so I decided to take a chance. Any predictions?
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