Our taxpayer dollars do work sometimes! Read about this honey scam here.

I stopped buying generic honey years ago after I read that they filtered out the pollen

from the honey. Seemed wrong to me then...still seems wrong to me now.

 
Truly pond scum poisoning our food supply

these individuals in the companies involved should be hit with much harder crimes such as endangering the food supply and even treason. This "garbage can" company in Texas is even worse in my mind. They are like the inside man - a traitor and should be treated as such.

Also goes to show exactly why foreign companies and individuals should not be allowed to be influencing our food supplies and commodities. Not only is it impossible to know or regulate what is going on in other countries - especially China, but we can only inspect a tiny fraction of what comes in. Worse, when it comes time (after the fact) to deal with perpetrators and criminals, we have no recourse. It is the same thing companies deal with every day when they are trying to salvage some project that they used "offshore" developers from India, China or even Europe. What recourse do you have if they screw you? Essentially none. Even beyond the legalities, the costs are prohibitive to try to navigate and pursue in some distant location.

 
I pay extra for local honey at the honey coop at the state fair every year. when the bees don't die

we had one year where the beekeepers didn't even set up a booth. this year was a good year again. yay.

 
Honeygate -HA! I only buy local honey from beekeepers. I'm told if the honey is clear, it's dead.

When they heat it to pasteurize it, they kill all the good. Plus, the taste is just phenomenal compared to the grocery store junk.

 
It's so nice there are so many local hives, even in San Francisco!

My current jar of honey is the honeycomb, the honey that surrounds it is clear and the beekeeper says this is how it looks, she didn't do anything but scoop it out of the frame and into jars. Supposed to be good for allergies but I just love eating it and using it in coffee.

 
our friend works at the Anchorage Museum, and he talked them into letting him keep 2 hives on top

of the museum. we have some awesome honey up here---when the bees do well---with all the fireweed and other flowers all summer. his home hives did not survive this year, or last year. but honey in general was good this year by other beekeepers.

 
I have met a few beekeepers and their process for harvesting the honey is always the same:

In the spring, remove the racks from the hives that contain the honeycomb, cut off the cappings and centrifuge for cappings honey, centrifuge the remaining honey comb, or sell honey comb as is. The honey is strained (to remove excess wax bits) and bottled. The beeswax, a natural byproduct of harvesting honey, can be melted down for candles, soaps, lotions etc.

Each time the honey is harvested, cleaned or new frames are placed into the hives for the bees to start their work over again.

Good beekeepers don't remove all of the honeycomb as the bees use it to winter over, so not every frame is removed.

Have you learned a different method? I would be curious to know!

 
That is so cool! I remember as a kid quite a few local museums had bees, my science teacher had a

lot of hives and I learned a lot from him. I met him in grade school when a wild swarm started to build a hive in my elementary school yard. Later, in high school, I joined his separate school for kids interested in science or field biology as a career - it was attached to the high school with accreditation but we took our classes separately and did a lot of field work.

I wonder how many beehives there are in SF? I know one beekeeper has 35 hives in SF, and there must be many more. Even our local paper, the SF Chronicle, has hives, and the Fairmont Hotel used to, I know about 5 restaurants that have their own hives. It's really cool.

 
I know a local beekeeper who was appalled when I suggested adding comb to the jar

He extracts the honey with a centrifugal spinner, cleans them and returns the combs to the hive. That way, it saves the bees a lot of wasted time and energy re-creating comb and they can immediately begin to refill with honey. He has very happy bees who produce more and more honey every year. The best honey I've ever tasted, too smileys/smile.gif

 
most all of our bees don't make it over the winter, so the beekeepers start new each spring with new

bees(the queens usually make it), so the combs get used for consumption. not all, but lots.

 
Nope. My parents only told me that if I flaunted me feathers in a pond and acted

hard to get, I might just get to be a lucky ducky and have ducklings.

That's all I know.

 
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