# DUDE your honey doesnt smell that good. . . . .



## Dannny (Mar 23, 2005)

So I got my first unhappy customer this week. He is a friend of my mother who absolutely loves honey. I gave him a free bottle about a month ago to "spread the word" and he just had to have another bottle, but payed for it this time. So the next time I saw him he told me the bottle of honey I sold him was not up to the last bottles level of greatness. I asked him why and he told me that it did not smell as good as the first bottle and therefore suggested that I may have fed my bee's sugar to create this honey(chinese people have a saying that, if the honey is very fragrant the bee's have collected from many flowers to make this honey, fact or myth?) and said that his 20 dollars would have been better spent at costco buying suebee's honey. LOL than I suggested the first bottle may have tasted/smelled better because things are sweeter when there free.


----------



## Dannny (Mar 23, 2005)

But if anybody has ever taken economics, there is no such thing as a "free meal", it takes countless bee's to make honey, crap im hella bored, its too cold for my bees to come out and for me to go watch them


----------



## SilverFox (Apr 25, 2003)

He is probably so used to 
"imitation honey", (honey sauce and the like) that he wouldn't or can't recognize the real stuff.


----------



## John Russell (Aug 8, 2003)

You can kill yourself trying to please everyone all the time....I had a guy come into one of my stores wanting a pail of buckwheat at 1/2 price because my honey was not "fresh". I asked him what he considered fresh, he stated "Right from the extractor!" I asked him if he ate honey only two months out of the year then. Idiot fool.

J.R.


----------



## NW IN Beekeeper (Jun 29, 2005)

That's pretty funny. 

Did he appear to have "spicket lips" from sucking right from the extractor?


----------



## Dannny (Mar 23, 2005)

lol yeah your always gonna find that punk azz whos gonna say something stupid to get a good deal.


----------



## Jim Fischer (Jan 5, 2001)

The question "is your honey FRESH?" crops up
often. The answer, of course, is "yes, of course".


----------



## jalal (Sep 2, 2004)

Yep, I would also say you certainly need to be firm about that it is fresh.

Sounds like a silly guy though John, knowing what an extractor is and considering that fresh.


----------



## ScadsOBees (Oct 2, 2003)

Hmmm, I might also mention that not all flowers smell the same(or taste), and that different flowers bloom at different times of the year (if he didn't already realize that), and if he wants really fresh honey to come over when you are extracting goldenrod honey, then he can have fresh honey that don't smell so fresh.


----------



## mobees (Jul 26, 2004)

I have never extracted Sucrose/Sugar syrup honey.
Does it taste bad, or smell bad? I always thought it was chemically similar to nectar honey but missing the odiforous and Flavinoids bits, thus pretty tastless and odorless. Do people try to pass-off sugar honey much and is there a way to tell??


----------



## Dannny (Mar 23, 2005)

you know, I was just going to ask that question.


----------



## BubbaBob (Jan 18, 2005)

Considering that honey was found in King Tut's tomb that was OK, I'd consider any honey less than 100 years old "fresh".

BubbaBob


----------



## mobees (Jul 26, 2004)

I cull out my older combs, every 2 or three years. It seems like the honey may pick up some of the odors of the older combs. It would be good to get a oldtimers take on this. I know like the older posts in this thread, fresh honey
can have a bit of a twang to it, which can put some customers off. I bet there are some tricks blending/banking/heating etc. to smooth it out.


----------



## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

While 100 year old honey may be edible, old honey doesn't taste at all as fresh as right out of the comb honey.


----------



## mobees (Jul 26, 2004)

Michael - Do you know if sugar syrup honey is it chemically the same as nectar honey except for flavor and odor chemicals, or is nectar honey
contain more diverse sugars.


----------



## ScadsOBees (Oct 2, 2003)

I took of some last year that was 1/2 from sugar, and it wasn't bad, just really mild. Like sugar water or corn syrup. Not as strong of the honey flavor/aroma.


----------



## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>Michael - Do you know if sugar syrup honey is it chemically the same as nectar honey except for flavor and odor chemicals, or is nectar honey
contain more diverse sugars.

If sugar syrup was the same as honey we'd all be out of business. Sugar syrup is mostly sucrose and not much else.

Honey has more different kinds of sugar and many other things including that the bees change some of the sugars with enzymes the add to it.


----------



## clintonbemrose (Oct 23, 2001)

I have a customer that is like that but I still see him every month for more of that poor honey.
Clint


----------



## Terri (Apr 14, 2003)

Out here in Kansas, customers tend to like some varieties of honey more than others.

Alfalfa and clover are enjoyed by MOST people, but the slang name for goldenrod/aster honey is "stinky honey", and we usually use it for winter feed.

I know that there is SOME market for goldenrod/aster honey, but an awfull lot of people here simply do not LIKE it! 

OK, so he doesn't like that variety. Personally, I do not like blueberry honey. I KNOW that blueberry honey is supposed to be gourmet stuff, but I STILL don't like it!

OK, so he doesn't like THAT variety of honey! PErsonal tastes are personal tastes.

If it were a friend of my family, I would offer to take back the unused portion and give a refund for that portion. 

*IF* he honestly does not like it, you might gain a steady and faithfull customer for the early honey. 

At the LEAST, your Mother would not be mad at you.


----------



## Aspera (Aug 1, 2005)

The examples go on and on. In France, locust honey is marketed as acacia and commands top dollar, here we do the same thing with orange blossom. In Eastern Europr in is forest honeydew that they like. I once bought some premium water white honey in CA (mesquite?) and though it no better than corn syrup. Some rave about clover, others say that it is too runny or want stuff made by AHB. The real problem is that most consumers think that honey is a homogenous product. This has killed the liquid milk market we shouldavoid the problem by letting people know that no two hives make the same thing.


----------



## Ribster (Nov 3, 2004)

I have a problem similar to what you're talking about Aspera. I live in a suburban area and market the honey from hives here as all wildflower. Though there are vast differences between honey from one month to another it's still a "wildflower mix". I would like to have a way to distinguish one set from another so that people who prefer that can ask for it. 

How would you do that? It would also require extracting at the end of certain flows each year. I simply can't. I wish I had a few acres to plant for my bees.


----------



## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

If you sort it and harvest it about three times I'd call it "spring wildflower honey", "summer wildflower honey" and "fall wildflower honey".


----------



## BubbaBob (Jan 18, 2005)

I'd still call it just "Wildflower"...fewer different labels to print.

BubbaBob


----------



## ekrouse (Aug 26, 2004)

I'm with Michael. If I can't identify a specific flower I call it by the season. So far I market:

1) Summer wildflower honey
2) Goldenrod flower honey

Of course the goldenrod has the richer flavor and deeper color, while the summer wildflower is too mild for my taste.


----------



## Joel (Mar 3, 2005)

We've worked dillegently for years to seperate the dominant floral flavors. Of course there is not Clover, Golden Rod or Knotweed in the NE. They are all overlapping flows influenced by the taste of the dominant bloom when a super is filled. We have clearly isolated 7 distintive floral tastes and now are able to identify them by thier characteristics in the comb. It is a good selling point in our markets but often can be difficult as people have their preferances which aren't available except in season.


----------

