Honey from the flowers at Putney Farm.
The crew busy at work on the mint. Supposedly we may get a bit of mint flavor in this honey.
This week we got the first large batch of our late spring / early summer honey. (We have sort of a co-op going on and will explain how this all works in a later post). Very exciting. Most of this honey comes from our early season flowers, so it combines the nectar of the fruit blossoms, herb blossoms, roses, wisteria and the ornamental plants. Later in the year the lavender dominates, but this is truly a blend from the garden and orchard. Surprisingly the honey is very light in color and flavor, with some delicate herbal notes. We served it with grilled figs and it was lovely. (And we just ate a bunch with the honeycomb…what a treat. Might include it in a few cocktails, too.)
Arugula flower.
Red leaf lettuce flower.
Normally our local honey is a “mountain” or “forest” honey that runs darker with more bitter notes from the variety of flowers the bees work, and that is not a bad thing at all- these honeys are big, rich and complex. But we will admit to enjoying our more traditional golden honey. It seems the bees focused mostly on our garden this spring. And that got us thinking about all the “little” or “lesser” flowers that supplied such light, tasty honey.
Rosemary flowers.
Like many gardeners, we sometimes focus on our “big” flowers like roses, but we have many lovely flowering ornamental or ground-cover plants. The bees seem to like most of them, and we figured it would be fun to take a few photos of these “little” flowers. And after enjoying the honey from these flowers, maybe we shouldn’t call them “little” at all…besides, any excuse to walk in the garden with a Macro lens is a good one 😉
Some “artistic” fun with the Crape Myrtle…
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Putney Farm 
Love the small in the garden too .. and the bugs. How did you manage to catch two bees on the same flower .. I can’t catch any *smile – In Victoria, British Columbia – the massive luxuary hotel, The Empress had their own bees and I got some great shots – have to do a post about it. When I talked to my friends living there .. didn’t know about the empress bees.
Thanks! We caught the 2 bees using a macro lens while they worked the mint blossoms. There is something about the mint that slows the bees for easy photos…we tried to capture them on other flowers but they move too much…
We would like to see a post on the Empress Bees!
I will do a post next week … have to sort out all my photos .. taken too many from everywhere. Miss my old camera that had a fab Macro. but the camera eats film .. and those days are gone and if I buy a new my finest old lenses don’t fit.
Minty honey? Honeycomb in cocktails? You are speaking my language!
Wow! That honey sounds fabulous and looks gorgeous!
I look forward to hearing about the bee coop. I’m interested in having bees one day but don’t know about taking it on solo.
If you have a garden or some land/space you can usually get a local beekeeper to place hives on your land in exchange for some honey (and some education). If you don’t have quite enough space you can sometimes encourage a few neighbors as well so the beekeeper has a bunch of hives in a concentrated area…that is how we started. We found someone by asking at farmers markets.
What lovely shots to let the “little” flowers share the stage! Isn’t it fun to see bees partaking of a flower smaller than they are?
It is cool…the real fun is the mint- the flowers are cones of very tiny blossoms. The bees walk from flower to flower so you can get very good photos…kinda fun…
Like bee hopscotch? 😉
Pretty close! Entertaining, for sure…
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