our bees like brambles according to CEH

[Cuckmere couple]

we submitted our summer honey

 

[Cuckmere couple]

and neighbours must like radish as we dont grow any

 

[Erichalfbee]

we submitted our summer honey

View attachment 26258

Haven’t had mine back yet. Waiting on spring and summer

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

and neighbours must like radish

....not that much if they let them run to seed!

 

[Cuckmere couple]

is there a famers crop which is recorded as garden radish...seemed odd in that quantity

 

[Cuckmere couple]

....not that much if they let them run to seed!

lol

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

is there a famers crop which is recorded as garden radish...seemed odd in that quantity

It's a brassica so it could be anything - OSR? or I have seen a yellow flowering brassica turn up in commercial wildflower mixes

 

[Cuckmere couple]

It's a brassica so it could be anything - OSR? or I have seen a yellow flowering brassica turn up in commercial wildflower mixes

OSR is further down the list (of the 40....i spared you that and gave you top 15!)

that would have replaced bramble for the spring results

 

[Jimmy]

It's a brassica so it could be anything - OSR? or I have seen a yellow flowering brassica turn up in commercial wildflower mixes

I don't think they can differentiate between wild relatives and crop plants that might have been cross-bred with the same wild relatives during their breeding program.

 

[viridens]

It's a brassica so it could be anything - OSR? or I have seen a yellow flowering brassica turn up in commercial wildflower mixes

The verges and waterway banks around here seem to be more densely covered each year with yellow flowering brassicas. I wonder if they are some kind of vigorous crosses with rape. Anyhow, I'm sure there wasn't so much yellow there when I was a lad.

 

[Jimmy]

The verges and waterway banks around here seem to be more densely covered each year with yellow flowering brassicas. I wonder if they are some kind of vigorous crosses with rape. Anyhow, I don't remember so much yellow when I was a lad.

They may well be volunteer OSR thriving without the competition they normally experience in a cultivated field.

 

[Gilberdyke John]

is there a famers crop which is recorded as garden radish...seemed odd in that quantity

Game cover crops can be interesting blends.

 

[drdrday]

Mine like brambles (rubus) too, but then my hives are sited within bee flight of a major horticultural research station specialising in fruit crops, and well known for their raspberry varieties etc. My bees seem to get the pick of the crop

 

[Erichalfbee]

we submitted our summer honey

View attachment 26258

This is my summer crop from 2019. You’d think that it was from bramble but it’s not. Bramble has small pollen grains which are not sifted out in the bees’ proventriculus so are generally over expressed in a sample. You have to look at the rest. My honey sample was from Rosebay which has a large pollen grain which is sifted out so that few end up in the honey sample.
There is a pollen coefficient you can use to accurately label your honey.

 

[boywonder]

My own result was a disappointment, if not a surprise.

2019 - 56 species identified (bramble and clover being c.a. 50%, but the remainder being comprised of lots of traditional wildflower species)
2020 - 24 species identified (bramble and clover being around 75%; the remainder not containing the same wildflowers - mostly brassicas and a few oddities)

Both samples from the same apiary, at exactly the same point in the year (early July). If the results are at all reliable, it just goes to show how pants last summer turned out to be - after a great spring. My own hope is that the converse is true this year. April and May have been amongst the bleakest in living memory, but the moisture in the ground, along with the fact that the cooler temperatures have set much of the flora back at least a couple of weeks, gives me great hope that, come June and July, we're going to enter nirvana.

Bring on 2021... that'll be the year my honey doesn't get analysed

 

[boywonder]

There is a pollen coefficient you can use to accurately label your honey

Hi Dani, do you know of anywhere this is published in a readily digestible form ? Thanks

 

[Parsonage Bees]

Got my results today. Was expecting 75% bramble from last July but only 7%. No, its mostly cabbage honey. Half a dozen brassica species in the top 15.

But this is the pollen DNA not the nectar source. ?

 

[GuyNir]

Got mine today. Was expecting a lot more bramble, as it’s all around the apiary…

 

[Erichalfbee]

Hi Dani, do you know of anywhere this is published in a readily digestible form ? Thanks

There’s one here
https://www.researchgate.net/figure...s-as-calculated-by-Sawyer-1988_tbl1_313499509

 

[Parsonage Bees]

What do you do with this coefficient? Multiply or divide by it? or . . . . ?