Buckwheat

[Biermann]

Hello All,

I have 14 acres Mancan buckwheat, three hives full of honey and I extract every 2 - 3 weeks, but can not find any of the so called 'dark, strong' tasting honey, only very light colored alfalfa honey (I have 40 acres alfalfa opposite to the BW). The BW flowers now for four weeks, the alfalfa for about six. I was looking forward to the special BW honey and now I am disappointed. Too much for my crew? Perhaps next year?

Cheers, Joerg

[Allen Dick]

I don't know which BW varieties yield and if some do not. As I recall, some only yield for a part of the day. Some may not give the very dark honey. Moreover if the bees were trained to some other source before the BW bloomed, they might have ignored it.

[BadBeeKeeper]

It doesn't matter how many acres of something you have, if there is something else available that they like better. I have a variety of things that bloom at around the same time, and it seems that the bees will ignore some things in preference to others. If one thing blooms slightly earlier, they will work it until something else becomes available, then they ignore the first thing in preference to the other.

I don't know what factors govern their preferences, but they can be selective when they have choices. I had the opportunity to observe that quite well this year, it has been a strange Summer.