Each honey season starts with the bloom of the soft maples that provide food for the colonies just stirring from a long winter. The dandelion bloom provides the first big source of nectar and pollen that allows the overwintered colony to expand and store fresh nectar.

After the dandelions, the honeysuckle provides a nice source of very light and mild-tasting nectar. Some years the black locust trees will bloom in early June and produce a lovely, light-colored and floral-tasting honey, and the sumac can add a spicy flavor as well. In mid-June the pasture legumes start to bloom, and it is from these that the majority of the year’s honey crop is made. White clover, vetch, sweet clover and birdsfoot trefoil fill the meadows and provide ample nectar for the bees to store as surplus honey. Around Independence Day, the basswood trees bloom and the bees come back to the hive with a lovely greenish-tinged nectar with a wintergreen minty aftertaste. The basswood flow makes some of the best comb honey around.

At the tail end of summer, the goldenrod, joe-pye weed, and asters provide a nice nectar flow of darker-colored, stronger-tasting honey to round out the season. Up to 90 pounds of honey is left on each colony to provide food for the bees themselves in the coming winter as they cluster and buzz to stay warm, waiting for another spring to arrive.

Over time, almost all raw honey will crystallize and become opaque and thick like butter. This is a natural process. See the FAQ section for more information.

Pure honey has many health benefits. The use of various honeybee and hive products like honey for healing and health is called apitherapy.

A: All Vermont honey will naturally crystallize over time, with goldenrod honey crystallizing fairly rapidly and pure clover honey among the longest to crystallize. Beekeepers may heat and filter their honey to slow down and prevent the crystallization process and increase the shelf-life of liquid honey. Honey that is crystallized is fine to eat as is, however, if preferred, crystallized honey can be softened or even re-liquified by warming in the sealed container for a period of time.

Creamed honey is produced by seeding heated and filtered liquid honey with a small amount of very fine honey crystals, mixing it, and then storing it at temperatures around 57°F for about two weeks.

A: Honey distributed for the mass market in plastic jars such as the bear-shaped containers has usually been heated and ultra-filtered to prevent it from crystallizing. It is difficult to extract crystallized honey from a plastic bear container, and heating the plastic container to liquify the honey will often melt the plastic.

A: Vermont does not have a definition of raw honey in statute, but in general raw honey is understood to be honey that has not been heated excessively. As mentioned above, the heating retards the crystallization process. Excessive temperatures can damage the flavor, quality, and enzymes contained in the honey. Some of the best Vermont honey has never been heated at all.

A: Honey that has only been run through a strainer to remove just large chunks of wax and propolis is considered unfiltered. Unfiltered honey will still contain the pollen and propolis that are naturally occurring in honey.

A: Propolis is the glue that bees make to sanitize and hold their hives together. All cracks and gaps are filled with it, and rough interior surfaces are coated with it. Propolis has antibacterial and antiviral qualities.

A: Mead is a fermented beverage made from honey. Mead was humankind’s first alcohol!

A: Today, approximately 900 beekeepers own about 14,000 honey bee hives in Vermont.

A: The queen bee lives for about 2–3 years. She is the busiest in the summer months when the hive needs to be at its maximum strength. Workers live only about 5 weeks in the summer, but winter bees can live 5 months.

A: The queen may lay 600–800 or even 1,500 eggs each day during her three or four year lifespan.

A: The average honey bee will actually make only one-twelfth of a teaspoon of honey in its lifetime, but there are up to 80,000 honey bees in a colony. Each bee will visit 50–100 flowers per flight, and bees in the colony must visit two million flowers to produce one pound of honey.

A: Honey bees pollinate 130 US crops, including fruits, vegetables, and tree nuts. A single colony of honey bees can pollinate 300 million flowers per day. The annual value of US crops pollinated by honey bees is $12.4 billion.